Vigil
by Peptuck
Summary: Mankind has survived its crucible, and while scarred and changed by the Ethereals, they advance into the cosmos. The galaxy beyond is a place of wonder and terror, of wealth and strife. Amid the threats and opportunities, both within and without, XCOM remains vigilant. Mass Effect/XCOM/Eclipse Phase/FEAR fusion.
1. Prologue: Archive

_**Vigil**_

_**Prologue: Archives**_

**Operation: Avenger - Log File: AA-3441**

**Transcript: Suit recording from XCOM Operative Colonel Annette Durand (PsiCorps)**

**File Restriction: TOP SECRET: EYES ONLY**

**Timestamp: Mission Time T+22:31**

_(recording shows death of MUTON ELITE (Designate: OpAvenger ET-ME-2) to plasma fire in upper torso by Colonel Durand)_

**T+22:31:** **Durand:** Another bastard down!

_(Recording shows door at rear of chamber has opened)_

**T+22:31:** **Durand:** Hawkeye?

**T+22:31:** **"Hawkeye":** All clear, nothing in my scopes ma'am.

**T+22:31:** **Durand:** Squad, move up! Gipsy take point!

**T:22:32:** **"Gipsy":** AFFIRMATIVE.

_(recording shows Major "Gipsy" Beckett advancing ahead of rest of squad toward open door. At this point OpAvenger ET-UE-1 ("UBER ETHEREAL") speaks again)_

**T+22:33: ET-UE-1:** The New One continues to surge…to prove that this was the worthy path, that we were justified in our efforts. This will bring about our redemption, and usher in our future.

**T+22:33:** **Durand:** Do you ever shut the fuck up?

_(timeskip: Timestamp T+22:38)_

_(recording shows engagement with ET-UE-1 from the perspective of Colonel Durand. Colonel Durand is firing a plasma rifle at ET-UE-1)_

**T+22:38: ET-UE-1:** Behold the greatest failure… of the Ethereal Ones… who failed to ascend as they thought we would. We who were cast out. We who were doomed to feed on the Gift of lesser beings… as we sought to uplift them… to prepare them… for what lies ahead...

**T+22:38:** **Durand:** Goddamn fucking right you were a failure!

_(timeskip to: Timestamp T+22:41)_

_(recording shows engagement with ET-UE-1 from the perspective of Colonel Durand. A MUTON ELITE (Designate ET-ME-5) is covering the retreat of ET-UE-1. Another ETHEREAL, ET-E-3, lies dead in the corner of the picture. Another MUTON ELITE, ET-ME-4, is being propelled through the air by a Kinetic Strike Module impact behind ET-UE-1 and ET-ME-5)_

**T+22:41: ET-UE-1:** The hunt draws to a close. It was not a vain undertaking… but a necessity, as our physical form has grown… ineffective. Our search for a perfect specimen was driven by our crippling limitation, and now, at long last…

**T+22:42:** **Durand**: At long last you have my boot up your ass, bastard! Hold still!

_(timeskip to: Timestamp T+22:43)_

_(recording shows ET-UE-1 under fire from Colonel Durand. Purple psionic energy is escaping from the body)_

**T+22:43: ET-UE-1:** This is not your path! Not your purpose! You need our guidance to hone this power… without us, what are you?

**T+22:44:** **Durand:** Better off, you piece of shit.

_(timeskip to: Timestamp T+24:43)_

_(recording shows ET-UE-1 collapsing to the floor. Purple psionic barrier is surrounding the entity, which is under heavy plasma fire from multiple sources)_

**T+22:44 ET-UE-1:** New One… we witness your intent. At the end, we understand. Preservation, not ascension. You deny our offer… in exchange for preserving your weak state...

_(recording shows more plasma striking ET-UE-1. Majority of impacts are deflecting off barriers. Colonel Durand closes with ET-UE-1)_

**T+22:58 ET-UE-1:** You have won a reprieve. But know this: your species has earned the attention of those infinitely your greater.

_(recording shows Colonel Durand pushing through psionic barrier using her own power)_

**T+23:06 ET-UE-1:** You cannot escape... ascension.

_(recording shows Colonel Durand breaking through the barrier and leveling her plasma rifle at ET-UE-1's head)_

**T+23:13 Durand:** But you won't live to see it.

_(recording shows Colonel Durand firing into ET-UE-1's head, disintegrating it)_

**END TRANSCRIPT**

* * *

><p><strong><em>Journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]<em>**

_Post-war didn't bring peace._

_I kept XCOM out of it, and thankfully, the Council didn't push us. I think they were terrified of what might happen if we started unleashing what we developed in conventional conflict among humans. Technically, it's in our charter, thanks to EXALT, but no one wants to see XCOM dropping in with Firestorms to kidnap your head of state. We killed plenty of human collaborators, and the post-war conflicts are against the countries that joined the aliens. South Africa. Egypt. Mexico. Argentina. China, Brazil, and India managed to escape it by executing everyone who they could find who collaborated, even the poor bastards that the Ethereals mind-controlled. I think if we lost any other countries then XCOM might not have been able to survive._

_And then there was the coalition-building. Post-war politics, all bullshit. Strategic Defense Coalition formed after China's old government collapsed when they executed their collaborators. ASEAN basically got rolled into the Strategic Defense Coalition. Apparently once they joined the aliens they stopped being attacked, which let them recover faster. SDC troops asserted authority in Afghanistan, bringing Iran and Pakistan into the fold with money and weapons. North Africa and the Middle East all becoming SDC puppets after that._

_European Union became stronger, as they got through the war without too much damage. North America finally coming together into one big United States of North America. Still think that's bullshit, and the politics involved went right over my head. US had to take control of Mexico after their government got subverted. At least the cartels were cleaned up. Pan-Pacific Alliance formed just after that, after Best Korea decided post-war was the best time to reunify and they got their teeth kicked in. Must have been drinking too much of their own Kool-Aid. Now we've got the USNA, Japan, Korea, Australia, Philippines, and New Zealand all allied to oppose the SDC._

_Brazil and the rest of South America spent a few years sorting out Argentina's subversion and collapse, before becoming one big happy family, and brought a bunch of south and western African countries into the fold too. Guess it was join the South Atlantic Federation or become another SDC fiefdom._

_Some countries got out of it without getting gobbled up. Russia. India. All those Central American countries somehow escaping the PPA. Israel. Turkey and Egypt ended up in the EU, though the latter's more of a military occupation. And all the coalitions are trying to get the "free countries" in bed. SDC squaring off against PPA and EU. EU and PPA circling the wagons and backing each other up. SAF and the independents trying to not get dragged into it. Russia building their own little coalition. Not quite World War One again, but it's not one world government either like we were hoping._

_Goddammit, we survived a fucking alien invasion, and seven years later we're right back where we started. We should have unified. Or at least stopped fighting. No shooting, of course, its all cyberwar and cultural and financial and trade bullshit and proxy conflicts. But we're still broken up into a mess of alliances and not looking at the real threats: EXALT and the Ethereals and whatever else might be out there._

_But I guess that's why XCOM exists. Because we can't count on each other, so we have to count on the few who can get shit done._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Excerpt from the research notes of Doctor Vahlen:<em>**

_Elerium uses psionics to generate power._

_A startling conclusion, at first, yet all observations point us along this path. We do not yet know the source of the energy generated by elerium or psionic powers, but we know they are tied together. Study of the energy signature released by many of the more advanced Ethereal technologies shows a developmental path focused on using psionics. Psionics for energy generation. Psionics for transportation. Psionics for communication. All of their technology draws upon the same source. Even Meld seems to use psionics as a catalyst; it doesn't work on plants or non-living material. It needs some form of psychic power to operate, even in extremely latent forms._

_There's no indication of the power's source, but it is present, and it fuels every aspect of the Ethereal's technology. Furthermore, I believe it is possible that psionics can be the key to elerium synthesis. A combination of the raw materials and psionic power should enable us to eventually begin manufacturing small quantities of elerium. And if it can be done, it would explain much of the Ethereals' interest in our species, and give us the ability to truly reach the stars._

_I suspect that we may be forced to rely on helium-3 fusion for much of our power generation simply due to ease of manufacture and availability, but with elerium supplementing our power supply, the possibilities are limitless. Of course, this is all theoretical; we will likely need to rely on limited elerium power to get into a position to deploy mining facilities in which we can harvest sufficient quantities of helium-3…_

* * *

><p><strong><em>From the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]<em>**

_Council is getting tighter with the funds. Oh, sure, they give excuses. They need the money to rebuild, they can't throw away cash on an operation ten years old, they refuse to let an obvious puppet of blah blah blah. Its the world's biggest stable of bullshit._

_The real reason they're cutting funding is because I'm still holding to the charter and not giving up some of the tech they want. Alloys - the grunts keep calling it Vahlenite - lasers, plasma, alien biology, a lot of the pure conventionally-derived tech advancements like SHIVs, and even the alien navigation tech, that's all been released. Elerium research is out too, and so are a lot of the armor techs; there's too much wreckage scattered about the planet to keep that out of their hands anyway, not that they can do much with it. But our psionic research, hyperwaves, Meld, the Gallop Chamber device..._

_I have to be careful with this. Shen's been warning me about what might be done with some of that tech. And I'm keeping a close eye on it. We might release some of it later on, but I don't trust the world right now. Not just the politicians, either._

_EXALT is still out there._

_We have to be vigilant, and not just from enemies without._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Excerpt from the journal of Doctor Shen<em>**

_Despite years of effort and research, and an understanding of the nature of how the substance works, no scientist in XCOM has been able to break the secret of Meld. We can understand what it does, direct it to the ends we need, but the nanotech itself… It cannot be replicated. Attempts to reverse engineer it run into issues with generating the power and computational capacity to produce nanites that can achieve similar results, let alone actually replicating the genetic and cybernetic integration required. We can vaguely emulate the abilities of Meld through retroviral gene therapy and cybernetic surgery, and studying its effects has improved our knowledge of human augmentation by leaps and bounds, but Meld itself is a mystery._

_And I feel that the difficulty in replicating Meld is a blessing. The reason is simple: it makes it too easy to play with what we are. It is an easy path, a quick and simple way to turn a man into a genetic supersoldier or cybernetic warrior. In a time of war, while fighting for the very survival of our species, it proved incredibly useful. In a time of peace… disastrous. We do not need to research the associated technology to make these enhancements for ourselves. We do not undertake the decades of research to perform such modification. We do not fight through the social issues, the ethical problems, the conundrums a civilization must face to earn such knowledge. Meld simply gives us these gifts, without allowing us to learn. We are given the "how" without the "what" or the "why."_

_Like giving nuclear weapons to cavemen._

_I think that was the Ethereals' goal. To give us weapons before our time, to elevate us without the social and mental maturity to use these tools properly. Taking away limitations, enforcing artificial growth, molding the shape of our development like a bacteria culture in a petri dish. All to make us into weapons that would be dependent on them for control and guidance - and as weapons, mankind exceeded expectations, burning the very ones who gave us this fire._

_I've reviewed the final logs of Colonel Durand endlessly, listening to those messages that the alien leader sent before the Colonel gave her life to save us all. The Ethereal's last words told us that without them, we had no guidance to control the power they had given us. Was that the statement of a megalomaniac bent on controlling us, or a warning that we would destroy ourselves without carefully mastering this power?_

_At least the Commander has heeded my warnings._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Excerpt from the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]<em>**

_In the thirteen years since Operation Avenger, we've seen so many psionics show up. The good news is that I managed to keep our funding and even expand it by leveraging some of our secrets._

_That, and I called dibs on the psionics._

_Oh, the Council members that hate XCOM's relative autonomy were pissed. But no one else is as qualified as XCOM to screen, train, and if necessary police human psionics. Most of the Council backed my proposal, though, even the pissed-off ones, because they couldn't exactly say no to the ones that saved mankind. And with us having the responsibility to train psychics, it gives us a whole lot more funding. After all, we can't synthesize elerium without psionics._

_We don't control the psychics, of course. I've made it clear that there's to be no brainwashing, no mind control, no implanting. Not like we have the Meld left to do that anyway; our Meld reserve is being kept under tight lock and key until we figure out how to replicate it, if we ever do. But we do keep the screening and training process under our control, and if anyone wants access to our pool of knowledge regarding the powers of the mind, they have to agree to that restriction._

_We'll have to be vigilant of course. The Council's agreed that only XCOM should be allowed to train psionics, but that won't stop some of them from trying to end-run us._

_The first Psi Academy is opening next year on Luna. We're not just going to be defending humanity anymore. We'll be leading it into the future._

* * *

><p><strong>PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: ALPHA PRIORITY CHANNEL<strong>

**TIMESTAMP: 12:33 HOURS ZULU TIME, 4/6/2035**

**FROM: XCOM CENTRAL COMMAND: MARS DETACHMENT**

**TO: ALL XCOM FACILITIES IN SOL**

**CASE IRON DRAGON CONFIRMED - EXTRATERRESTRIAL PRESENCE DETECTED**

At 4 June, 2035, hyperwave sensors at XCOM Recon Site Theta-Kappa detected extraterrestrial construction on the south pole of Mars. Anomalous gravity shifts and energy signatures at site CONFIRMED to be caused by active extraterrestrial technology. All XCOM facilities are to initiate protocol CASE IRON DRAGON. Briefing packets are to be unlocked and standing military personnel are to go on full alert. All reserve and civilian staff are to be mobilized for possible military contact. All current Council government heads of state are to be alerted immediately.

Taskforce STRIKE-ONE personnel are to report to nearest XCOM facility for transportation and briefing.

* * *

><p><strong><em>From the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]<em>**

_Its been two years since the biggest false alarm in the history of the human race. I don't think anyone breathed a bigger sigh of relief than we did when they turned out to be empty ruins and the active energy signature was just a malfunctioning core._

_Took us a long time to figure out what the hell we were looking at. I think we treated the devices in that outpost like everything except what they were. None of us thought we were entering an archive of all things. We all went in expecting to find an Ethereal monitoring station, or a base to launch attack craft, or some communications relay they had hidden away._

_Doctor Vahlen was first in there after the site was secured, and Dr. Shen came out of retirement so fast that we barely got him suited up properly to explore the site. Pushing eighty now and he didn't give a damn. He had to look at new tech, to figure out how it worked. And in six months he'd managed to crack the secrets of this technology._

_We had no idea what it was when we first looked at it. It wasn't Ethereal. Looked nothing like Ethereal tech, behaved nothing like it. If anything it resembled pre-Elerium tech. There were what we guessed were ships, but they couldn't hope to break atmosphere, not with their mass and power supply. Not until Shen and Vahlen studied them in minute detail, and noticed how a certain substance within the machinery was designed to receive an electrical charge. When they tested it, they discovered an electrical charge increases and decreases mass in a field around the material._

_Vahlen calls the substance "element zero." Because the stuff influences mass, she dubbed it a "mass effect." Straightforward. If we let the grunts name it, we'd likely end up with something silly._

_Element zero. Mass effect. The ability to literally alter the effective mass of an object by a positive or negative electrical charge. Incredible. It changes everything._

_But it was the archives that really got our attention. They confirmed what we suspected: we were looking at an old species, much older than ours, and nothing like the Ethereals. Protheans, they were called, and going by their recorded star charts, Vahlen theorizes that these ruins are fifty thousand years old._

_What happened to them? Are the Protheans gone? Did they run afoul of the Ethereals like we did, and get destroyed? If they did, why didn't the Ethereals use their technology? Could one of the species we were killing be the Protheans, turned into slaves of the Ethereals?_

_Too many questions, and no answers. We haven't even started to decipher the archives, to figure out what's intact and what's corrupt. Vahlen theorized that the Protheans appeared to operate with different senses than what humans are capable of, even our sensory psionics. This isn't even counting an extremely complex script. Vahlen theorizes that there could be thousands of different languages making up this archive's data store. It could take decades to even get started on translation._

_Until then, we have to act as normal. Study their technology. Understand them. I pray that the Protheans are gone, because I don't want to see a repetition of the previous war._

_But if they're not, if something is out there…. well, we're XCOM. We'll destroy them just like we destroyed the Ethereals._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Excerpt from the journal of Doctor Shen<strong>_

_I feel young again._

_It is not simply the technology, although the chance to study and integrate new designs is welcome. It is the… purity of the work, I would say. Whenever I look at Ethereal-derived technology, I still see the twisted hulks of metal and flesh that we fought decades ago. I am confronted with the lengths we went to alter our own soldiers to match the enemy. I sublimated my ethical and moral reservations to win and survive._

_With Prothean technology, however, I do not have these issues. The ethical and moral simplicity of the technology helps. These devices are not made to twist a species into something it wasn't, to force evolution and subservience. They simply alter physics, without altering ourselves. I do not feel the pangs of guilt or the fears of complicity in the idea of remaking humanity itself into something horrific._

_Another issue is the relative simplicity, yet difficulty, of this new technology. I can experiment with element zero, building devices and creating designs, but so little of the Prothean ruins are functional. It forces me to think more than I did with the Ethereal technology, where I simply adapted what we stole from our enemy to our own ends. Nor do I feel the apprehension of knowing that I am working with technology that would have played a part in the Ethereals' plans to enslave us all._

_There have been some breakthroughs, limited though they are. I believe we will eventually be able to forge a faster-than-light engine, with the help of Doctor Vahlen's research, if her theory on how mass effect fields alter light speed itself. Even if that does not pan out, the fields themselves, coupled with elerium, would allow us casual interplanetary travel and space colonization. But there is so much more I think that could be possible with this technology._

_I know I don't have the time to discover it all. But, I can work in peace, and that has shaved a few decades off these old bones._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Excerpt from the research notes of Doctor Robert Boyle, XCOM<em>**

_While unable to precisely match the elegance, versatility, and simplicity of the Meld nanotech, we have made great strides in replicating many of the effects of these remarkable little devices. Study of Meld's effects has improved our capability at gene therapy and mechanical augmentation by leaps and bounds. I don't think we'll be able to make MEC personnel or advanced gene-mod troops standard, but with some proper research and application of our own treatments, we could eliminate most genetic diseases and strengthen the immune system, reduce aging, and more._

_But I think that one of the most promising applications would involve some adaptation of Ethereal computers, genetic research tools, and Meld-derived nanotech. The processing capability of these devices are extraordinary. Experimentation has shown that it is possible to include highly sophisticated sensory capability in specialized nanotech. These genetic tools could allow us to craft or alter existing human bodies to an unprecedented degree. Altered human genomes with special adaptations to zero gravity, aquatic environments, or surviving in harsh terrain uninhabitable by our current bodies. And with the Ethereals' technology, we could build specially "morphed" human bodies from the womb._

_But most intriguing, I believe, is that it is possible to use these tools to map a human brain to an exacting degree, right down to the individual connections between neurons that form the fundamental underpinnings of memory, skill, and personality. And if we can copy personality, we can transfer that personality to another brain. Or even an artificially-grown or assembled brain._

_Doctor Shen, my mentor, does not welcome this. He fears this technology, and I cannot entirely disagree with him. There are dangers inherent to such developments. But I cannot cast aside these gifts. We have earned them, one slain alien and fallen human at a time._

_Adaptable, designer human bodies. Transferrable minds. Functional immortality._

_Utterly terrifying, but also impossibly tantalizing. All possible with the technology we pried from the bloody hands of our would-be conquerors._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Excerpt from the research notes of Doctor Vahlen, XCOM<strong>_

_Wormhole transition remains difficult, despite having all this time to study the Ethereals' technology. The challenge is not so much in targeting a point-to-point gateway so much as it is maintaining a gateway in the face of disruptive energy signals and conditions. We are able to open portals between points within a star system, but current range is limited to seven AU and the gate can only remain open for a few seconds. Thankfully, hyperwave scanning continues to maintain pace with wormhole range, so we are able to maintain up-to-date targeting that is vital to properly positioning wormhole openings._

_However, much like our issues with targeting terrestrial locations with precision hyperwave scanning, we cannot open a gate within a gravity well. There are complications both due to gravitational distortion as well as instability caused by friction with atmosphere and the much more severe problem of pressure differential between vacuum and atmosphere. And the strain on the wormhole psionics is so great that I cannot ask them to push themselves to force the wormhole open. It could kill them, and I will not have that on my conscience._

_We have not been able to determine how the Ethereals managed to bypass these issues. It may not even be possible to open a gateway for anything smaller than a craft the size of the Temple Ship. This would be consistent with alien behavior during the war, with UFOs being able to "vanish" once they left our atmosphere or appear without warning despite extensive scanning of the skies. They were never in orbit to begin with._

_Until we solve this problem, we will be forced to open gateways outside of atmosphere or strong gravity wells. Fortunately, our range outside of atmosphere is still extensive._

_Mass effect technology appears to be a much more viable option for extrasolar travel. I believe it possible that we could alter the properties of light with a strong enough mass effect field. Even more intriguing are some - purely theoretical currently - applications of wormhole generation coupled with mass effect fields…._

* * *

><p><strong><em>From the journal of XCOM Commander [REDACTED]<em>**

_Its the end of my career as XCOM's leader. The next Commander might actually get to keep his name as public record. Heh. Even after all these years we're still so secretive. The fact that we exist and what we do is public, but the details, the secret technologies, even the names of most of the soldiers and scientists and noncombat personnel still active are all secret. We've released a lot of the tech over the years, but Meld, the Gallop Chamber, some of the more… disturbing psionic tech… that's ours and its going to stay that way. I think that's fueled a lot of the resentment from Council nations._

_Despite that, XCOM is still spearheading our future as a species. We've started extrasolar exploration, finally. Vahlen's team of successors still hasn't gotten the psionic wormhole tech to extend past solar system ranges. I shouldn't expect miracles from them, though; they're not Vahlen's original team, and they're not… motivated as we were forty years ago. They keep talking about how they might be able to couple the wormhole with the mass relays to create some kind of long-range device, but the physics of it are purely theoretical._

_But we've still advanced by leaps and bits of Prothean records we discerned pointed us toward the Charon Mass Relay. I hate the idea that our FTL is limited by Prothean hardware, and that we haven't even begun to figure out those giant quantum-locked bastards. But we've still made use of alien tech as best we can._

_Politics, though… the more things change, the more they stay the same. Russians have formed a big coalition to play mediator in this idiotic cold war between the PPA/EU alliance and the SDC. XCOM's close to getting dragged into the whole thing, too. Big corporations - they're calling them "hypercorps" now, some trendy buzzword - have been setting up their own little capitalist fiefdoms on Mars and Venus and Titan._

_Weirdest of all, there was a revolution among the miners at Jupiter, backed by the SAF. Now they've formed a "Jovian Republic." More like a Jovian Junta. Place has been a magnet for the entire "bioconservative" movement opposed to the new augmentations and gene mods. Biocons, authoritarians, anti-alien survivalists, hyper-con militants, and pretty much anyone terrified of where the Ethereal tech is taking us, all flocking to that planet. Wouldn't matter much except that they own the best slingshot position in the system and control sixty percent of Sol's helium-3 production._

_This… is going to be trouble. I just know it. But its out of my hands now. On the plus side, the first extrasolar colony is going up next year. Arcturus is already being settled by those pioneer teams from the Armacham hypercorp, and they'll open the gate for civilian settlement._

_I hope I live to see it grow._

_I'm the last of the old team. Bradford, Vahlen, Shen, Durand, Zhang, Martinez…. We did good. I just hope we've prepared mankind for whatever lies beyond our solar system._

_Good luck, everyone. Godspeed._

* * *

><p><strong>PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL<strong>

**TIMESTAMP: 03:22 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 21/8/2103**

**FROM: XCOM ARCTURUS STATION**

**TO: ALL PPA, EU, SDC, SAF, ALLIED EARTH COUNCIL, AND XCOM FACILITIES**

**SUBJECT: CASE BLOODY JESTER CONFIRMED - HOSTILE EXTRASOLAR ALIEN CONTACT**

As of 21 August 2103: PPA colony on planet Lincoln of the in Caldera System in the Armstrong Nebula cluster reported unidentified alien contacts. USNA 77th Recon Flotilla frigates USN Outlier and USN Wildeye, Jovian Space Force 3rd Flotilla frigates JSF Bulwark and JSF Kitesfear, and XCOM frigate XCS Gettysburg were on station at the colony. Unidentified alien contacts opened fire upon USN, JSF, and XCOM ships after transmitting an unclear broadcast. Both USN recon ships transmitted transcripts, sensor data, and navigation data before being overwhelmed. Final transmissions indicate self-destruction to prevent capture of sensitive technology and personnel. Enemy technology consistent with mass effect artifacts recovered from Prothean ruins. Sensor returns are NOT consistent with Prothean structural patterns.

Emergency hyperwave beacons triggered from colony surface before power grid disabled by orbital fire. Last transmissions indicate hostile landing in progress.

CASE BLOODY JESTER is now in effect. All military assets are to go to full alert and prepare for immediate action. Reserve units are to be mobilized for deployment.

XCOM rapid-response units are mobilized. XCOM Direct Action Task Force Seven has been dispatched to Arcturus Wormhole Relay.

**FULL XCOM REARMAMENT APPROVED BY COUNCIL ORDER 112-A90.**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>The idea for this one has been percolating in my head for a while, and I eventually had to write it lest it drive me insane. I'll say right off the bat that Agayek's _XCOM: Second Contact_ was a big inspiration for this, along with IgnusDei's _Mass Effect: Human Revolution_ and Earthscorpion's A_eon Natum Engel/Aeon Entelechy Evangelion _stories for being the big, direct influences on how I approached this story. It was originally written as a straight Mass Effect/XCOM crossover, but the story I started writing was _dreadfully_ derivative and unoriginal. It wasn't until I started experimenting with other settings that I realized drawing elements from FEAR and Eclipse Phase and... other sources would provide some interesting wrinkles into the setting. After several revisions, I finally hit on an idea that I liked. Thus, Vigil.

This story is primarily a Mass Effect and XCOM fusion. Its following my fairly standard formula with these fusions: Mass Effect's larger galaxy is the core backdrop, with elements from other franchises integrated. **Don't worry if you're unfamiliar with Eclipse Phase.** The EP elements will be generally explained by context and some exposition, and for the most part I'll try to keep things clear. I'll mostly be drawing from the transhuman elements of EP's setting, mostly as a means to help define the society and culture of post-Ethereal War humanity.

Another thing I really wanted to develop with this setting is internal politics. In a lot of crossover/fusions, humanity is a single unified force, and in a lot of XCOM crossovers, XCOM is the primary human military. I'm attempting to avoid that, mostly because the story becomes a lot more interesting in my opinion when you have many conflicting interests and your protagonist military isn't superpowered and massive.

One last, crucial, important thing I need to make clear: T**his isn't going to be a stompfic,** and the Citadel is not going to get wrecked by plasma fire. If you came to read a story about XCOM kicking turian ass and pimp-slapping asari, hit your browser's back button and go read something else.


	2. Chapter One: CASE BLOODY JESTER

_**Vigil**_

_**Chapter One: CASE BLOODY JESTER**_

The _XCS Gettysburg_ cruised through the void over the gas giant of Hallis (or New Augustus, according to the Jovians), following its regular patrol path between the helium mining facilities and outlying habitats on its various moons. The dull brown bands circling the Jupiter-sized gas giant were reflected off the smooth vahlenite hull plating of the dagger-like frigate. The hydrogen-helium giant was unremarkable, especially compared with the hothouse giant Malachi further in-system.

"_JSF Bulwark_ has sent us another demand for authentication," Lieutenant Carter reported, his tone faintly amused. "They're asking for updates almost as much as you do, Captain."

Captain Davis Chi grunted an acknowledgement as he walked across his frigate's bridge. The oval-shaped room was dominated by a central holographic projector displaying a model of the Hoc system. Half a dozen crewmen, his primary command staff, were seated around the projector, hands moving over the haptic interfaces of their consoles. They spoke quietly or worked in silence, communicating with either their muses or other infomorphs like Carter. All wore the olive green vacuum jumpsuits of XCOM naval crew.

Chi paced around the bridge, his vision filled with data feeds from his ship, projected onto his retina by his augmented reality implants. He barely paid any attention to the feeds; long experience would show him any abrupt changes to the scrolling graphs or text readouts, and anything truly important would be instantly flagged by his muse or one of the informorphs running the ship's second-to-second operations.

The Captain didn't bother asking if Carter had responded; long practice had shown that Carter would have already sent a reply. The Jovians demanded authentication every time the _Gettysburg_ passed through their claimed airspace over Hallis, just like they did every ship that entered their space. It was only partially paranoia, as the PPA had claimed the other half of Hallis' airspace for their mining, and the Jovian and PPA miners had been bitter rivals over Hallis' bounty of fuel since the colony was established eight months ago.

Hoc had been named by some unimaginative infomorph surveyor in the big rush after the Arcturus Wormhole Relay had managed to lock into the relay in this cluster. The name had come during initial surveys, before anyone had actually probed the system. The discovery of the third planet, bearing a breathable oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and levo-amino ecology had drawn near immediate claim and settlement by the PPA, although the Jovians had been right on their heels. Unable to claim the lush third planet for their own, the Jovians fell back to their own strengths and colonized much of the gas giant's moons and airspace.

"Nothing on hyperwave?" Chi asked as he paused before the hologram. It showed several hundred immediate contacts, all civilian ships, save for four marked warships: the two United States of North America guards and the pair of Jovian Space Force sentinels watching their respective interests.

"As usual, nothing to report," Carter replied. "Just like it was ten minutes ago, sir."

Chi nodded. Carter was a bit flippant for a military officer, but he'd never crossed over into insubordination. They both understood, though, that they had to be cautious when patrolling over Hallis/New Augustus. _Gettysburg's_ official job was to defend the colonies against alien threat - in fact, an XCOM ship was required to patrol every human system by international agreement - but its other job was to make sure everyone in-system played nice by its mere presence.

Which meant if something happened between the PPA and Jovians, _Gettysburg_ would be right in the middle of it. It made for a compelling reason to watch the hyperwave like a hawk.

The other reason was much more curious.

Chi's fingers twitched, which brought up menus on his AR display. A few more minute gestures took him into the _Gettysburg's_ secured files, and he reviewed the sensor logs from the last couple of days. Yesterday there had been a small Cherenkov radiation burst on the edge of the system. Not anything particularly strange; when he'd first detected it Chi had assumed it was a probe from another of the major powers, sent in through mass effect faster-than-light drive. Naturally, all three military forces in the system had run a hyperwave scan across the system for the probe, because no accompanying burst indicating a jump out of the system had occurred.

Under normal circumstances, sweeping the area around the probe would eventually have picked it out, and someone would have sent a drone or fighter to jump in and blow it up. But despite two days of active hyperwave scanning, they had yet to pick up the probe. Chi didn't know the physics behind hyperwaves, but he understood their capabilities and limitations; while they allowed faster than light scanning and communication, the hyperwave sensors could only scan so much of an area at a time.

If someone had managed to get that probe to escape the search zone without being detected, or even more worrying, developed a way to hide from hyperwaves that didn't involve gravity wells, it would be a serious game-changer.

"Have we been able to get anything more from this Cherenkov reading?" Chi asked.

"Nothing substantial," Carter replied. "The signal was too grainy and background radiation doesn't provide us with enough of a silhouette. And if the PPA or Jovians have anything sharper, they haven't told us anything."

Chi nodded, disappointed but not surprised. He turned back to the local display, which showed him both conventional and hyperwave sensor feeds of the myriad craft moving through the Hallis/New Augustus habitation zone. Bulky, rotund helium tankers were moving between the scoops in the giant's atmosphere, ferrying freshly mined fuel to processor stations. About fifty space habitats hung in orbit, mostly around Hallis' miniscule rings, most of them simple rotating cylinders. There were other habitats on the various moons, but nothing that broke the ten thousand population mark yet - unlike Lincoln, where the PPA population had shot up to the two hundred thousand mark already.

They were a hundred thousand kilometers out from the nearest Jovian warship, _JSF Bulwark._ Unlike the XCOM frigate, it was a lean, angular craft. It kept the dagger-like shape of the XCOM design, but where the _Gettysburg_ was made of curving lines, resembling an elongated, scaled-up version of the old Firestorms, the Jovian ship was sharper and more angular. The main guns on the Jovian frigate were visible even at this range, the red lines of the laser cannons visible on both thermal and visual scanners.

"Sir, unscheduled Cherenkov burst," Carter reported, a heartbeat before a marker appeared on the holographic display. Chi frowned at it, leaning forward, and brought up sensor readings on his augmented reality display. Anyone doing FTL jumps in-system had to announce their intent to do so ahead of time, lest the radiation burst from their transition set off an itchy trigger finger.

The new arrival - no, arrivals - had come out of faster-than-light about one light second from Hallis' security perimeter. Thermals spoke of seven distinct contacts, five of frigate tonnage and two of cruiser tonnage.

"Thermal profile is unknown," Carter reported, his voice shifting from curiosity to alarm. "Sir, I've got high energy output, but nothing matching our energy signatures." On Chi's display, he could see readouts on the new arrivals' emissions: mass effect signatures and eezo masses, but no indications of elerium.

Chi didn't respond verbally. Instead, he direct-linked and sent out immediate alerts and orders over the _Gettysburg's_ wireless mesh network: General quarters, emergency hyperwave alerts, and lay in an intercept course, all in immediate text format. He also ordered channels opened to all the other warships in-system. Chi then paused for a heartbeat to check and make sure that the entire crew had been properly backed up within the last day. He nodded when he received confirmation that everyone's cortical stacks and egos were copied and being sent as part of the out-system hyperwave transmissions. No need to risk permanent death.

The _Gettysburg_ powered up, deck vibrating and shifting beneath Chi's feet. Messages flashed back and forth on his AR display, periodic murmurs from the crew the only sound over the humming of electrical equipment and vibrating metal. The warship always went deathly silent on combat maneuvers as everyone switched over to rapid-fire data transmission.

_"Sir,"_ Carter reported, his words coming in as a direct data feed across Chi's AR display, "_I've run a full analysis on the contacts' profiles. No match to any known human or Ethereal ship design. Not even theoretical models."_

_"Then we've either got a completely new human ship type or a new X-Ray,"_ Chi replied. He brought up more detailed sensor models on the ships. Emission and visual plotting revealed something very strange: long, rounded craft that very vaguely resembled the curvature and lines of the smaller Ethereal scouts. They almost looked like oblong, wingless wasps with their legs flush against their bodies, and Chi could make out rough head, body, and thorax-like sections.

_"Definitely nothing humanlike,"_ he muttered out loud. He checked time to intercept and firing solutions, but the gunnery crew - both biological and infolife - had already plotted solutions and were waiting on fire orders. Laser batteries, mass accelerators, and the Gettysburg's forward plasma cannon were ready to fire.

"Send out the first contact package," he ordered. "All bands."

There was a moment of hesitation before the comms officer sent an acknowledgement. Understandable. No reason to expect aliens to be friendly after the first contact last time.

_"Channel open to JSF Bulwark,"_ another of the informorph crew reported. Chi tapped the link that appeared at the corner of his sight, and the face of Commander Ferebee of the JSF Bulwark appeared in place. He was a lean, hatchet-faced officer in his forties, who wore his blue Jovian uniform jumpsuit with the natural ease of long experience.

_"Captain Chi, do we have a plan?"_ he messaged.

Chi snorted. XCOM always had a plan. This sort of thing was what they spent decades preparing for.

But more telling was the immediate deference to a ship they had just been challenging for authentication minutes prior. Every child born after the Ethereal War had been raised with a deep respect - and in some places, even reverence - for XCOM's actions in the war. The truth had been kept quiet, but everyone knew that XCOM had played a pivotal role in the survival of mankind, and that had set up one hell of a tradition that they worked to live up to. XCOM's actual military force was a fraction of the major military powers', but when it came anything that could involve alien life, whether it was exploration, colonization, or security, they deferred to XCOM.

The Captain sent nonverbal orders out to the rest of the system's ships, outlining his plan. The Jovians responded immediately, the PPA only a moment after them.

_"Hyperwave?"_ he queried, directing it toward his sensor officer.

_"Nothing identifiable,"_ the officer replied. _"Whatever's on that ship definitely isn't human, but I can't pin anything down at all. Crew might be synthetic."_ There was a pause. _"Something vaguely matching the old Seekers and Sectopods, but its iffy. Alien equivalent of a synthmorph, maybe."_

"Keep trying," Chi replied. He shifted attention to heat loads and the locations of the PPA frigates. A radiation burst reported that the _USNA Outlier_ had just hopped from deeper in the system to Hallis's orbit, close to the rest of the mixed-nation fleet. Wormholes were faster and more precise in in-system jumping, but there was no need to give away that capability to the enemy.

Potential enemy, he reminded himself. He checked comms, but the officer reported no response to the first contact package. That wasn't good.

Heat load reports indicated they had plenty of combat time, even with the radiation from Hallis and the _Gettysburg_ running at sudden combat power output.

_Outlier, Wildeye, Bulwark,_ and _Kitesfear_ were closing, and Chi readied himself. The arrivals were advancing, their formation spread out. It was an obvious attack vector. The Captain leaned over the hologram, eyes watching them intently, either for transmission or-

Abrupt sensor returns marked a cascade of thermal emissions from the ships, and a volley of fast-moving objects screaming toward the five human frigates. Mass accelerator fire.

_"Under fire!"_ he broadcast across the ship, and alarms sounded across the bridge. _"Initiate wormhole transitions!"_

For the second time in a century, humanity was at war with an alien power.

* * *

><p>Lieutenant Adrian Carter watched the battle erupt with interest, even as he multitasked across the <em>Gettysburg's<em> internal network, exchanging data with the other infomorphs operating the frigate's systems. The physical crew in their biological or augmented bodies handled physical work and overall command duties, but it was the intelligences that threaded throughout the frigate who managed much more complex and time-critical tasks.

Like most infomorph crew, Carter was an uploaded human ego. He'd volunteered to become a part of the _Gettysburg_ itself, leaving his previous body in cold-storage for this tour of duty. Most informorphs who got uploaded to combat ships viewed it as an easy career path, but XCOM was careful with its digital crewmen, only picking both the most motivated and competent to take on the crucial virtual roles. Carter sat at the "command" level of the _Gettysburg's_ digital crew, interfacing with the Captain and other department heads, as well as monitoring sensors and comms.

That meant his position made him an effective go-between in combat, and thus he had a front-row seat to the oncoming wave of destruction but little ability to alter the situation.

He had, however, been instrumental in coming up with Chi's battleplan for an attack. The basic idea involved offensive wormhole use coupled with the particular strengths of the ships. The Jovians' frigates were designed for defense foremost, having multiple batteries of laser point defense systems coupled with redundant reactors and heavy armor, whereas the PPA's ships were optimized for assaults with powerful forward-firing laser, kinetic, and plasma arrays.

The _JSF Bulwark_ and _Kitesfear_ moved to intercept position, weaving around the incoming volleys of mass accelerator fire and answering with their own guns. At this range, the fast-firing enemy weapons didn't have the speed to catch up with the agile, if heavily-armored, Jovian frigates.

Behind them, the PPA and XCOM ships powered up their wormhole generators. The most crucial crewmen on the ships initiated the Durand-Vahlen Spatial Transition drives, and power flashed through the ships and out of special conduits in their bows. Purple light erupted and shaped into a brilliant disc before each of the frigates, and they dove in. Carter braced himself - as much as he could, considering he was a being entirely stored on the optical drives of an XCOM frigate. There was a buzzing that ran through the ship's electronics, and he was briefly disoriented by the shift in space-time but it was momentary, and he knew he was better off than the organic crew.

The three frigates burst out of the wormholes through openings directly behind the attacking fleet, and whirled around. Plasma, laser, and kinetic weapons unloaded almost instantly into the rear of the attacking frigates. They were close enough to inspect visually, and Carter was intrigued by the elegant and almost familiar curves of their designs. Green bolts of plasma, burning red lasers, and solid vahlenite rounds from mass accelerator rails slammed into the backsides of the cruisers as they turned to face the attackers…

And with the exception of the lasers, which slashed into the hulls of the ships and blasted superheated vapor from their plating, every shot bounced off some shimmering, thin barrier twenty meters from the warships' hulls that gleamed a faint blue in the visual spectrum.

_"Oh, shit,"_ Carter involuntarily transmitted, right before a storm of return fire poured toward the frigates. Evasive maneuvers began almost immediately, the PPA and XCOM frigates juking and weaving, but kinetic rounds slammed into the ships, shaking them violently. Were it not for their vahlenite hulls, they would have taken severe damage.

_"Wormhole us out of here!"_ Chi messaged, before a direct impact blasted a gaping hole in the internal network. Carter jumped through the ship, distributing his processes and restoring damaged sections from archives. He began running an analysis on the enemy weapons while other infomorph crew sent their own reports.

_"Hostile data packets in the mesh!"_ messaged Ensign Haleen, who was their cyberwarfare specialist. _"I'm purging them, but they're adapting fast."_ There was a millisecond pause. _"Fascinating complexity…."_

_"Internal damage severe,"_ reported Ensign Bjoric, monitoring the operations and engineering. _"Power redistributed."_ The Ensign patched together a damage report and bounced it around the network, and Carter took a moment to check it before passing it to the Captain. One of the enemy shots had penetrated starboard decks, knocking out some of their point defense lasers and cutting power to the forward plasma cannons. No crew injured, though it had caused some damage to secondary data storage for the infomorph crew.

Carter's initial analysis finished. Sensors indicated dark energy manipulation and some kind of directed gravity barrier. The enemy had managed to make some kind of defensive shield using mass effect technology. Fascinating. Radiation analysis came back a moment later, giving him a rough hull composition of the enemy ships.

If Carter had blood, it would have run cold. Unlike the shields, he recognized this technology.

He compressed the findings and sent them to the Captain, right as another wormhole opened and they transitioned out of the immediate line of fire.

* * *

><p>Chi spared a couple of seconds to read the analysis Carter had sent him, as the <em>Gettysburg, Outlier,<em> and _Wildeye_ regrouped. The Jovians were trading shots with several of the enemy frigates, but they were having as much luck as the rest of the fleet. Their best long-range weapons were their main plasma cannons, which were just as ineffective.

"Some kind of kinetic energy barrier," he transmitted to the fleet as the three battered frigates came around and began another wormhole transition. Three jumps this close together were straining the crewmen who interfaced with the Durand-Vahlen drives, but they had to redeploy quickly to hit the enemy. "Plasma weapons completely ineffective. The shields stop the plasma before impact, and far enough out that radiation only does superficial damage.

"Spectral analysis also confirms that the enemy are using a derivative of valhenite, though with a significantly heat resistant composition going by these readings."

The conclusion went unspoken. This was an enemy who was armed specifically to fight their technology.

"Lasers appear to be our most effective weapon, as they can bypass these kinetic shields. Mass accelerators might be able to penetrate their hulls and shields, but only with massed fire."

The wormholes drives activated, and the three frigates redeployed to Hallis' immediate orbit, several thousand kilometers out from the Jovian ships.

"Orient and engage with mass accelerators," he ordered. "Hold these bastards off as long as possible, until we can egocast the colonists back to safety."

He paused, bringing up the statistics regarding the Jovian population on the Hallis stations. As he did so, he could feel the _Gettysburg_ maneuvering underneath him, mass accelerators firing at the enemy frigates.

The numbers weren't good. More than half of the Jovian population voluntarily went without cortical stacks due to various beliefs regarding transhuman technology. That meant that their egos were not regularly backed up, and they would need to be evacuated physically.

He scowled, watching his crew as they engaged the enemy. Evacuation was rapidly becoming their only viable option. The five human frigates were severely outgunned, and the enemy had a perfect counter to their primary weapons. Reinforcements were no doubt scrambling already, but it would be at least half a day before ships could arrive from the Sentry Omega wormhole station via mass effect drives.

But XCOM was not going to leave living humans in alien hands. The Ethereal War had taught them that in gruesome detail.

_"Captain, what if they bypass us at Hallis?"_ Commander Ferebee messaged. _"The PPA colonies are protected only by orbital weapon stations."_

_"Then we jump after them,"_ Chi replied. _"Outlier and Wildeye will move to intercept if the enemy disengages and goes after the colonies."_

But the enemy seemed intent on taking out the warships over Hallis. Their frigates criss-crossed the space over the planet, firing at long ranges, as if they knew that the only effective weapons that the humans had were short-ranged, and that the only effective military force in-system was at Hallis.

Chi ran the evacuation numbers. Getting the hundreds of thousands of physical bodies off-planet would take hours with their available lift capacity; colonial policy was that there would always be enough lift capacity on hand to get the population of a colony to safety, but getting those ships active, organizing them, getting the people on board, and transporting them out would take time.

_"We have to hold the line and keep them busy,"_ he ordered. _"Buy the colonists time to escape. With our own blood if necessary."_

* * *

><p>The five frigates fought for two hours straight, a constant, high speed battle of attrition. The aliens attacked with relentless focus, pursuing the human ships across the space over Hallis, keeping their distance and pummeling away with constant barrages of mass accelerator fire and a near-endless assault via electronic warfare. During that time, Lincoln and Hallis were constantly firing off hyperwave bursts and launching ships carrying the physical bodies of the colonists, waging their own frantic battle of logistics to get everyone to safety.<p>

_JSF Bulwark_ was the first frigate to fall. A combination of damage, heat buildup, and constant breaches of its wireless network by hostile, adapting viruses finally slowed it down enough that four mass accelerator shots gutted it amidships. Despite its tough vahlenite construction and Jovian overengineering, _Bulwark_ broke apart, half the ship tumbling away into Hallis' depths.

It did not fall unavenged, however, for a few minutes afterward, concentrated fire from the human fleet caught up to and blew apart an enemy frigate, blasting apart its engines and sending it in a ballistic course toward Hallis' rings, where it was shorn apart a few minutes later by rock fragments and micrometeorites.

_USNA Wildeye_ died fifteen minutes later. Multiple impacts along the bow penetrated into the command center and killed half the crew. Infomorph crew took over for several minutes, desperately keeping the frigate alive until it could careen close enough to another alien frigate and blow it out of space before finally being torn to pieces.

_USNA Outlier_ died three minutes later, finally succumbing to heat buildup and enemy fire. A shot tore apart its reactor, leaving it on a terminal ballistic trajectory that the enemy easily predicted. They angled multiple shots into the frigate's path and shredded it.

Two hours into the engagement, Lincoln warned that they had several thousand people to still evacuate, while Hallis' population was almost entirely gone. By that time, _XCS Gettysburg_ and _JSF Kitesfear_ were on their last legs.

_"Get as many people out as you can,"_ Captain Chi messaged. He was wrapped in multiple bloody bandages. No shots had penetrated the bridge, but twice he'd been violently thrown about when the ship was hit, before he'd finally secured himself in his chair.

On the sensor display, he watched _Kitesfear_ suddenly alter course, charging an enemy frigate with an abrupt, deadly flare of engine emissions. It close to near point-blank range and opened fire, tearing into the frigate and blowing it apart. seconds later, enemy fire intersected its path and annihilated the Jovian ship in a torrent of twisted metal and blazing heat.

_"Gentlemen,"_ he transmitted, a cold calm falling over his body. His crew turned toward him - those that weren't keeping the frigate alive, that was. He saw fear in their eyes, along with resignation, anger, and defiance.

_"One day, each of us will stand on the Memorial with Durand,"_ he said. _"This day, we earned that particular honor. Fortunately, final death will not come for us, so we'll all get a chance to keep killing these bastards. I'm transmitting final ego backups. Helm, wormgate team, here are your coordinates. Tactical, you'll know what to do."_

He paused, and smiled.

"Vigilo Confido," he spoke out loud, and the crew echoed his words as the final hyperwave went out. A moment later, the wormhole opened, and they plunged through.

_Gettysburg_ dropped out of a precisely calculated hole in space-time directly to the rear of the most badly-damaged enemy cruiser, and opened fire the instant it emerged. Every weapon poured fire into its wounded aft end. Lasers poured beams of destruction through the rent its quasi-Vahlenite hull. Mass accelerators pounded the weakened kinetic barriers, and for a moment they collapsed. Plasma, so ineffective against shields, washed over the damaged cruiser, burning deep into its hull, vaporizing exposed decks.

The _Gettysburg_ poured fire into the alien cruiser, striking deep into its heart, and before it could do more than start to fire its maneuvering thrusters, the XCOM gunners found its heart and tore it loose. The main reactor was blown apart, sending the alien ship tumbling out of control toward Hallis.

Return fire came within seconds, intersecting on the _Gettysburg_.

Captain Davis Chi did not feel it when he died. Kinetic rounds tore through his bridge, vaporizing him and his command crew at the moment of their final triumph, and rending the _Gettysburg_ apart.

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File AA36471-999-CNC<strong>

**Flagged: High Priority**

**Excerpt: Closed Council Session re: AA-3391 R-991 incident**

**Councilor Tevos:** Dimal, what is the urgency?

**Councilor Dimal:** War, my fellow Councilors.

**Councilor Graccius:** A bit dramatic there, Dimal? War is a possibility that we have to deal with every day.

**Councilor Dimal:** It is noteworthy when the war is between an unknown and a barely-understood mystery.

**Councilor Tevos:** Explain, Dimal. Who is at war?

**Councilor Dimal:** The geth.

_(several moments of silence)_

**Councilor Graccius:** I assume you have intelligence confirming this?

**Councilor Dimal:** Of course. Observe. _(sound of an omnitool activating)_ Along the edge of the Perseus Veil. Cluster 442310-33, unnamed with no known claims. Region has little apparent strategic value except that its primary relay can offer access to the Veil and several Terminus border systems, and has multiple secondary relays to neighboring clusters, all with limited value. Special Tasks Group placed probes to monitor the nebula's systems many years ago. They currently report an engagement between an unknown force and what appears to be a fleet that matches geth energy signatures with seventy-two percent certainty.

**Councilor Graccius:** Concerning. Who are they at war with?

**Councilor Dimal:** Unknown at this time. Conflict appears to be limited to the singular system. Lack of information on either combatant has produced limited workable intelligence on disposition or deployments. In addition...

_(pause for three seconds)_

**Councilor Tevos:** Dimal?

**Councilor Dimal:** What limited data we have been able to obtain indicates that the exchange between the combatants included intense, long-range, directed thermal energy bombardment.

**Councilor Tevos:** Thermal bombardment? Is that confirmed?

**Councilor Dimal:** The reports and visual data indicate warping of hull plating consistent with high-intensity thermal radiation. Patterns are consistent with exposure to vented reactor plasma. However, exposure is too consistent to be anything but weapons bombardment, and it appears to be using plasma on a scale we haven't seen before.

**Councilor Graccius:** Interesting. Kinetic barriers should render plasma weapons ineffective….

**Councilor Dimal:** I will of course forward a full analysis of the energy readings to you, Councilor.

**Councilor Tevos:** This is… very disturbing. We must act quickly.

**Councilor Graccius:** Agreed. The new species' technology is disturbing for other reasons. This nebula is close to the Terminus Systems, on the border. Terminus interests will take note and may react. If you will, Councilors, I must mobilize a Citadel taskforce to staging positions in the Traverse in case the situation escalates further.

**Councilor Tevos:** Prudent. Advise your commanders to avoid conflict if possible, unless the threat moves beyond the Veil itself. I will begin assembling diplomatic missions to this new species. Dimal, I expect you will keep us fully informed on all new developments.

**Councilor Dimal:** Of course. I have already authorized further STG deployments to the area. Once we have learned more of the belligerents, you will be informed.

_(Councilors Graccius and Dimal depart - see video record in file AV333471-N12. Pause for nineteen seconds)_

**Councilor Tevos:** Goddess. Plasma weapons.

_(Pause for seven seconds)_

**Councilor Tevos:** Its happening _again_.

**End transcript**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>You might have already figured it out, but the system where the battle took place in is the Hoc system, where a certain tropical planet featured fairly prominently in the first Mass Effect game. In this case, Virmire was named Lincoln, and Cloroplon is named Hallis/New Augustus.


	3. Chapter Two: Operation LIGHTNING KING

_**Chapter Two: Operation Lightning King**_

"Stellar plot and hyperwave link, Lieutenant," Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich ordered as she fought to settle her stomach. "Where are we?"

"Working," replied the navigation officer. The young man's tone made it obvious that he was fighting his own negative reaction to the transition through the Arcturus-Sentry Omega wormhole. "We're two light-seconds out from the Sentry Omega gate, ma'am. It was a clean transition."

"Excellent," Dolvich said with grim nod. Her accent was moderately thick with her Russian roots, but she spoke perfect English - unlike many in her family, who struggled even with autotranslators. Her stomach stopped trying to fight through her esophagus, and she focused on incoming data feeds. Strike Seven Delta had indeed exited the wormhole within two light-seconds, which was well within the established margins. One never knew precisely where one was going to end up when passing through a wormhole gateway.

The _Halberd_-class XCOM carrier _XCS Chevalier's_ bridge had a similar layout to smaller ships' command centers: an oval room with a central hologlobe to display tactical information, surrounded by crew stations. Although in the carrier's case, the Admiral's chair overlooked the bridge, and there was a separate section toward the bow of the compartment for the pilot and tactical officers. Everyone wore the dark olive vacuum-rated jumpsuits of XCOM crew.

"Captain Chi?" Dolvich asked once she had confirmed their location on the sensors, and located the rest of Strike Seven Delta's flotilla.

Next to Dolvich's command chair, a waist high cylindrical tank lit up. Light twisted and shaped into the form of a lean man in glowing XCOM greens, his skin a pale blue. His features matched the currently dead commanding officer of the XCS Gettysburg.

"I am… present, ma'am," Captain Davis Chi replied.

"Been a while since you resleeved?" Dolvich asked with a faint ghost of a smile.

"I haven't experienced infolife form in a long time, Admiral," Chi replied, shaking his head.

"They'll get you a body once we're finished taking back our system," Dolvich said, smile fading. "But I need your tactical input now."

"Of course," Chi replied, and an edge of eagerness entered his tone. "I want to see these bastards burn."

Nothing like the knowledge that you died at enemy hands to drive you toward revenge.

"Make sure the taskforce is locked in on the same vector and prepare for FTL," Dolvich called to her officers. She checked with her infomorph crews and got status updates sent to her AR irises, and then turned back to the hologlobe. The markers indicating her fleet formed up around the Chevalier within a few thousand kilometers, heading on the same vector.

Strike Seven Delta was a small, fast-reaction taskforce, a component of the larger XCOM Direct Action division's Strike Seven fleet. She had two three-hundred meter _Myrmidon_-class escort destroyers, a quartet of lighter one-hundred-fifty meter _Gladius_-class frigates (sisters to the _Gettysburg_), and a five-hundred meter-long _Longbow_-class guided-lance cruiser. There was little variation in the design between the smaller ships; they were built like the old Firestorms from the Ethereal War, a dark blue-gray hull shaped vaguely like a teardrop, wider and rounded in the rear and narrowing to a hook-like point at the front. The XCOM emblem and motto were emblazoned along the "wings" extending amidships, making the craft resemble long, silvery swords. Their aft ends glowed with their thrusters, and their plasma and laser batteries burned with green and red fire. The hatches for the four recessed fusion lance batteries on the Longbow were hard to spot on the display.

All were dwarfed by the kilometer-long _Chevalier_. The _Halberd_-class carrier was much larger and more cylindrical in shape, its launch bays closed tight until they were ready to deploy. Unlike the combat craft, the _Chevalier_ carried limited direct-fire weapons. Almost all of its interior space was given over to the hundreds of fighters and drones and two battalions of XCOM soldiers it carried. Like the smaller craft, her aft end was rounded and glowed from the quartet of thrusters that propelled the massive warship.

It was _significantly_ more firepower than what the enemy had faced a few hours ago at the Hoc system.

As navigation synched up their paths and Strike Seven Delta's informophs and VIs traded data, Dolvich checked the wormhole array and the fleet surrounding it. The wormhole defense fleet consisted of more than seventy ships, mostly cruisers and frigates but with two light carriers matching _Chevalier's_ size to support them. They were a mix of PPA, EU, and SDC ships, with an additional force of about ten Jovian frigates. Anything larger than the carriers simply wouldn't fit through the wormhole arrays.

She wished she could call on the full firepower of that defense fleet for help, but Dolvich knew she did not have any authority over them, and they had a crucial job themselves. Their official mission was to defend the wormhole entry; after all, if the wormhole fell, then every colony in the cluster would be cut off. Their unofficial mission was to keep an eye on each other, for that exact same reason. No one wanted their colonies held hostage in case of a diplomatic crisis, which was one of the reasons why the arrays were actually handled by a third party: built and operated by Armacham Technology Corporation crew and protected internally by an XCOM team.

Her eyes then drifted to the two devices that made up that critical link. The Prothean mass relay, a massive, two-pronged blade of dark blue quantum-locked metal and alien construction with a massive element zero core at its heart, and the more utilitarian wormhole array latticework built a couple of kilometers in front of the tips of the blades, where ships went when they were "launched" by the relay.

The wormhole array was a two kilometer long and one and a half-kilometer wide and tall egg-shaped lattice of vahlenite, constructed of twenty-meter-wide struts. The end of the lattice pointing toward the mass relay was open, and around its equator were a regular series of fifty-meter-wide spheres and cylindrical thruster modules that kept the array in station-keeping position with the relay. Dolvich thought she could see the strange, pitch-black gap in space-time that was the wormhole entry, a spot where no emissions of any kind passed through. Her suspicions were confirmed when she abruptly began detecting emissions from where the hole was situated, indicating the array's Armacham crew had shut it down.

She didn't really know the physics behind how the wormhole array operated. When she'd asked about the questionable sanity regarding building a structure on the business end of the mass relay, the scientist in question had explained that the "mass-free" corridors the relays created allowed whatever they were transporting to pass through solid matter. Otherwise every ship using them would run the risk of striking a micrometeorite while traversing the interstellar distances and getting reduced to free atoms. How the mass relay achieved this was largely unknown, a fact that still perturbed much of the human scientific community - as well as anyone worried about strategic issues. No one wanted their interstellar options limited by the functional relics of a long-dead civilization.

The array itself was equally mystifying, though for other reasons. Dolvich was not Gifted, and thus lacked psionics, which was an integral part of most Ethereal-derived technology. The arrays used the same wormhole technology the Ethereals had used to move their Temple Ship and lesser craft around, though they were somehow amplified by the mass relays. The short version Dolvich had learned in astrophysics classes at the XCOM Naval Academy over Saturn had explained it as using the mass relay to form the corridors between wormhole entrances and exits, even between relays that didn't connect, like Arcturus and Sentry Omega. Effectively, they were using Ethereal tech to co-opt two relays into linking together in ways they didn't normally.

It was still a crude technology. Aside from the issue with ships appearing at random locations within a few light-seconds from the wormhole, there were side effects to passing through the gates. Most people only experienced nausea, though some had more severe reactions. In a few cases there had been cardiac arrests or seizures. Dolvich had read reports of psychological effects as well, including anxiety attacks, insomnia, depression, and a few cases of schizophrenia or dementia. XCOM regularly ran physical and psychological exams on anyone who used the wormholes.

But instability was a given with Ethereal and psionic technology, even XCOM-developed tech, let alone something that XCOM had joint-developed with help from a profit-focused hypercorp like Armacham Technology. There was still so much about the aliens and their psionic technology that humanity didn't fully understand. The Jovians in particular were ferocious in their criticism of a reliance on technology that was yet to be completely researched and comprehended.

Dolvich's AR display showed shift in fleet disposition, which shook her out of that line of thought. A flick of a finger and a focus on the data plots showed a formation of PPA ships peeling off from the defense fleet. She counted eight ships, most of them frigates, but backed by a trio of heavy cruisers, the lead ship identified as the USNA Potomac. A moment later, five Jovian Space Force frigates - half their deployed force - joined them, headed by _JSF Phalanx._ Markers on her display indicated the ship commanders patching into their channel.

_"Gentlemen,"_ she messaged. _"You have all received the initial briefings. Judging by the data dumps from our fallen comrades in the Hoc system, we are facing a new enemy with technology specifically designed to counter ours. Last reports indicated hundreds to thousands of people left on the surface of Lincoln during the evacuation who could not egocast out or left active egos on the surface._

_"Our mission is simple. I've always preferred it that way."_ She clenched her fist as she sent that. Fuck the rampant politics that dominated humanity these days. XCOM was always stuck between the political bullshit of half a dozen conflicting alliances.

_"We will transition to the Hoc system, reconnoiter the situation, determine the enemy presence in our system, and whether there are any survivors."_

She leaned forward, a snarl escaping her lips that she knew would be carried as part of the message to the other captains.

_"Then we kill every last one of these bastards."_

Acknowledgements came back almost immediately, along with more than a few strong words of agreement.

"All ships report matching vectors," messaged Lieutenant Kilociv. The infomorph's avatar lit up in the holotank next to Dolvich's chair, alongside Chi's representation. "Transit time calculated. Our course will put us directly in Hoc's Kuiper Belt-equvalent. Estimated transit time… eighteen hours."

"Excellent," Dolvich replied. "Send the countdown."

* * *

><p>Major Jack Harper took his seat at the front of the briefing bay connected to the <em>Chevalier's<em> main troop launching bay, where the one thousand, six-hundred-odd troops of the two XCOM battalions would launch. Assuming they were able to win in space; otherwise they'd be stuck on the carrier until it was time to retreat. Considering what he'd downloaded and reviewed from the command deck, the enemy were a formidable force. He'd spent a dozen subjective hours in simulspace going over the data, and he planned to get back to it shortly after the briefing. The first alien contact in eighty years was too fascinating an opportunity to pass up on.

The rest of the briefing room was filled with the officers of the two XCOM battalions: platoon commanders, company captains, non-commissioned officers, and Major Magrabi of Second Battalion. Being XCOM, they were an eclectic force assembled from every nation and alliance on Earth and beyond. More than a few were no longer wearing the bodies they had been born with, having either died in accidents or combat or simply resleeving into bodies that were gene-modded or mech-augmented for military work. Harper himself had sleeved into a gene-mod body designed for rapid tactical and strategic analysis, which helped boost his own considerable skills. And like Harper, they all wore the regulation XCOM olive green spacesuits.

Colonel Benito Canales took a position at the front of the bay, before the holotanks used to display entire urban environments or planets. He was a towering figure, his current body largely mechanical and designed for fitting into heavy MEC battlesuits. His face was weathered and battered from decades of active service. XCOM didn't see as much service as some of the allied militaries, but they were the ones that were called in for independent colonial police actions, psionic policing, pirate hunting, and mediation when a confrontation happened between powers, and had seen their fair share of unrest and violence.

"Officers," Canales boomed as they took their seats. He didn't bother explaining the situation; everyone had already received reports from the command deck and had reviewed them in simulspace.

"We have sixteen hours before we reach Hoc. Upon arrival our objectives will be search and rescue of surviving egos on the ground at Lincoln and aboard Hallis' orbital habitats, as well as neutralization of any alien presence on the ground and seizure of alien technology. You've all received maps from the PPA on the Lincoln colony layout, and the Jovians have actually coughed up the schematics for their habs and hydrogen scoops.

"Evacuation teams report that one thousand, two hundred eighty-six unique egos were left behind on the surface when the aliens entered orbit and cut off evacuation," Canales continued. "It is unknown how many Jovians may have been left behind at Hallis. They reported everyone safely evacuated, but someone always slips through the cracks, so we still need to be certain. Obviously, our objectives will likely change once we have a better understanding of enemy disposition and can confirm if there are any survivors. If we have a major enemy presence on the ground, we may have to abort ground ops until the ships clear out enemy concentrations."

Harper nodded. They might have been sixteen-hundred of the best, most well-armed and trained human soldiers, augmented by MECs and some of the best psionics in human space, but they were just two battalions. They would have a difficult experience fighting a division-strength force. The fact that none of the other human forces had sent anything larger than a heavy cruiser to support them also meant XCOM was supplying the balance of the ground component. They could expect a couple of PPA companies and maybe a couple of Jovian platoons.

Canales waved a hand, bringing up a holographic display of showing data feeds from the destroyed frigates and orbital stations.

"If their infantry technology is comparable to their space tech, then we will be facing an enemy who is particularly specialized to defeat our best weapons. Their ships can generate some form of mass effect-based kinetic barrier. It renders plasma weapons completely ineffective and is also capable of deflecting kinetic weapons. Lasers can bypass these defenses, however. If this holds true to their ground forces, our plasma weapons will experience reduced performance. We will likely need to go in lighter than usual."

There were a couple of chuckles, and Canales frowned for a moment before nodding in acknowledgement of his unintentional pun.

"I've worked with our infolife crewmen and Majors Harper and Magrabi in simulspace to come up with some ideas on what we might be up against. I've assembled a few dozen possible scenarios and force compositions. I want you to take your people through these scenarios to get them acclimated to what we might be fighting down there. With luck, we might have come up with something that vaguely matches actual enemy capabilities."

Some more chuckles, though now they sounded a bit more uncertain. Harper didn't blame them. He could see the anxiety on the officers' faces, concealed though it was. Even Canales, augmented as he was, covered up a hidden reserve of uncertainty.

That was Harper's specialty: evaluation, study, understanding. It was why he'd requested specific mods to improve his mental capacity, to capitalize on the strengths of his ego. It was why he'd risen through XCOM's ranks as quickly as he had.

And it was the reason why, unlike his fellows, he wasn't worried or anxious about what they might find. Humanity would triumph; it was what humans did. He wanted to see what technologies these aliens had, to learn of them, take their knowledge, and see what else could be done with it. That was how humanity had achieved so much in the last eighty years.

"After that, I want everyone to catch some rack time, even if its sleep pods," Canales continued. "The whole strike force should be well rested by the time we hit the edge of the Hoc system. Bring any concerns to me before then. Dismissed."

* * *

><p><strong>PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL<strong>

**TIMESTAMP: 0731 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 21/8/2103**

**FROM: STRIKE TASKFORCE SEVEN, DELTA SQUADRON, REAR ADMIRAL ELENA DOLVICH, XCS CHEVALIER**

**TO: XCOM TASKFORCE SEVEN CENTRAL COMMAND**

Strike Seven Delta and allied fleets have arrived in the Hoc system in response to CASE BLOODY JESTER alert by _XCS Gettysburg._ Preliminary recon has been initiated from Kuiper Belt equivalent. Wreckage of XCOM, PPA, and JSF ships confirmed. No survivors present. Hyperwave assessment of wreckage confirms unknown enemy has salvaged most of the remains of the destroyed ships.

Hyperwave scanning from the edge of the system has confirmed the presence of hostile alien ships in orbit over Lincoln and other planets. Technical data is attached. Status of colony is unknown at this time. No transmissions have been received from surface. Long-range visual scans at two, four, and six-light hour ranges indicate alien movement on surface. Hyperwave scanning of hostile force and colony remains inconclusive on hostile numbers or status of colonists.

Strike Seven Delta is preparing to engage hostiles.

**END TRANSMISSION**

* * *

><p>Admiral Dolvich leaned over her CIC's hologlobe, AR displays feeding her a wealth of data. She read the incoming information with a ravenous hunger as her hyperwave scanners sent real-time readouts from the Hoc system's primary worlds. Equal amounts of trepidation and anticipation worked through her, the former because the enemy had reinforced the system with additional ships that could threaten her task force, and the latter because they had done the same and thus she could kill more of them.<p>

Unsurprisingly, the aliens had a significant presence over Lincoln itself. Hyperwave counted thirteen frigate-tonnage vessels and four cruiser-tonnage ships orbiting the garden world, with half those ships in rough station-keeping over the colony capital. Half a dozen more frigates were patrolling over Hallis, and she counted a single frigate orbiting over the other three planets in the system. There seemed to be a little bit of activity over the third planet, which - according to the survey records Dolvich brought up - was considered a possible mining target, but the atmospheric conditions - severe heat and pressure - rendered it unfeasible for a startup colony. Maybe the aliens were more tolerant of the conditions.

Dolvich focused again on the alien craft. She had viewed hours of combat footage already, but these unpressured, long-range observations of enemy operations revealed interesting aspects of the enemy's operations. For example, she could see that the aliens' frigates were actually periodically descending into the atmosphere to deploy what looked like armored troop pods into Lincoln's capital city, Mariana. Considering power generation profiles, element zero mass, and gravitational readings from the ships, it indicated that they were using mass effect fields to allow their spacecraft casual atmospheric movement, something humanity still hadn't perfected; they still relied on the power supplied by elerium for achieving brute-force escape velocity and vahlenite hulls to withstand the harsh fury of reentry. That meant the enemy possessed a worrying sophistication regarding mass effect technology.

In addition, the enemy outnumbered the human fleet slightly, at least in absolute numbers. And mass effect faster-than-light drives meant that the enemy could easily concentrate force from across the system the moment they detected a threat. Their shields and hulls meant they had the advantage in a battle of attrition.

The solution came to her almost immediately.

Dolvich leaned back in her chair and contacted the other ship captains, as well as his fighter commanders.

_"Gentlemen,"_ she messaged as soon as everyone was connected to her channel, and proceeded with her usual bluntness. _"We move to attack within the hour. Against this enemy, we will be destroyed at long range. Therefore, we engage with maximum speed and violence at minimal range."_

_"Point blank annihilation,"_ one of the PPA captains messaged back, with grim approval, which was echoed by the others on all sides. Dolvich sent her own agreement.

_"This mission has been codenamed Operation: LIGHTNING KING. An initial force will attack at Hallis. Jovian and XCOM frigates will wormhole into close proximity with each alien ship and destroy them quickly with close-range fire. What happens next will depend on the enemy's reaction. If they attack our frigates at Hallis with their force over Lincoln, we will drop our entire remaining force, including our cruisers, fighters, and gunships, directly on top of them."_ She highlighted Lincoln. _"If the enemy does not react to our force at Lincoln, we will regroup and deploy our entire force to hit them there. Once Lincoln's airspace is clear, then we will commence ground operations."_

_"And if the enemy doesn't play to your tune, Admiral?"_ asked one of the Jovian captains - a Captain Hamak of the _JSF Unyielding._ Dolvich frowned in annoyance at the implication in his words and the not-so-subtle challenge. Standard Jovian independent bravado, but still unacceptable.

She shrugged, transmitting that dismissal across the channel, and continued with her message. Confidence was better than an open rebuke.

_"Then we improvise,"_ she replied. "_We are the best spacers and soldiers in the galaxy. We will adapt and overcome, should the enemy not be gracious enough to die for us in the first place."_ She paused, checking readiness reports for a moment, and then continued. _"We initiate in thirty minutes. Make final preparations."_

She closed the channel, then immediately opened one to Captain Hamak, and was gracious enough to wait for him to acknowledge her.

_"Captain, do not question my authority in a combat zone again,"_ she messaged.

_"Someone had to point out the hole in your plan, Admiral,"_ the Captain replied almost immediately.

_"Perhaps I was unclear. I apologize for the misconception,"_ Dolvich replied. _"Allow me to make matters more apparent: The next time you question my authority in a combat zone, you will wake up in an XCOM holding cell. Does that clarify the situation?"_

Several seconds passed. XCOM's charter and the mutual defense treaties signed in regards to potential alien attack gave her that exact legal capability, and the Jovians knew it.

_"Understood, ma'am,"_ Hamak finally replied.

_"Excellent. Maintain your bravado and anger for our mutual enemy. We face the greatest threat to our existence since the Ethereal War, Captain. If we do not stand together, we will die."_

_"Yes ma'am."_

_"Prepare your ship, Captain Hamak. In twenty-nine minutes, we unleash humanity."_

* * *

><p>Captain Davis Chi watched with anxious helplessness as the fleet maneuvered into position to launch Operation: LIGHTNING KING. The sensations associated with being an infomorph were strange. Instead of gripping his command chair, his tactile senses were on the heartbeat of the Chevalier's thrumming data pathways. His hearing reported not only audio but the constant pulse of data and millions of passing bits of information threading through the carrier's system in a sandstorm of individual packets. He could read and comprehend the raw data coming in from the sensors, thanks to his rank and position as Admiral Dolvich's advisor.<p>

He saw the moment the Jovian and XCOM ships launched their attack, and through hyperwave observations, he could track their assault in real-time.

The aliens were following broadly predictable patrol patterns. There was enough random movement in their patterns that a long-range shot from a kinetic weapon would not be accurate, but the pattern was not erratic enough to throw off the wormhole calculations.

Eleven human frigates - five Jovian and six XCOM - burst through wormholes in a torrent of emissions and purple light, and opened fire. Their deployment was needle-precise on the scale of battling spacecraft, dropping to within a few dozen kilometers of their targets, well within range to engage with lasers at minimal diffusion.

Chi had witnessed the enemy's reaction to a wormhole flanking maneuver firsthand, but that had been in the thick of the battle, with a heart pounding and adrenaline pumping. From a distance, with the simulated neural architecture of an infomorph body negating the impact of biochemistry, he could see the battle from a new perspective, and he found himself startled at the reaction time of the enemy.

Or more specifically, the total lack of any reaction time at all. The alien ships were maneuvering around to open fire on the Jovian and XCOM ships before they had barely started to clear the wormholes, responding to the sudden assault with speed that spoke of an observe-orient-decide-act loop that spanned milliseconds.

Lasers slashed back and forth in sudden barrages of rapid-fire violence, the aliens opening up only a second after the human craft. That second was telling, however, when the weapons moved at light speed. Even with their absurdly-fast reaction times, the aliens still had to pivot and bring their weapons to bear, and the human weapons hammered them with a lethality that was equal parts furious vengeance and cold, preprogrammed firing solutions.

By the time the enemy started returning fire, three of their frigates were being cored with lasers, mass accelerators, and plasma fire - the latter once the enemy's kinetic barriers had collapsed. The others, through luck or design, had managed to evade at least some of the humans' fire and were dodging evasively, point-defense lasers and mass accelerators pummeling away at the human craft. Their movements and fire were precise and deadly, something Chi recognized from the lengthy defense over Hallis. They ruthlessly assaulted damaged hull sections and within seconds one Jovian frigate was belching debris and flame from its port flank, and an XCOM frigate was breaking off into an evasive pattern, engines flickering.

But the mauling the humans received was handed back manyfold. The remaining aliens' ships were rapidly overwhelmed, their hulls slashed open and interiors set ablaze by heavy plasma fire. Chi wondered if the Admiral was going to make an attempt at capture, but as he watched the ruthless assault, he doubted that. Capture and analysis could come later; the current objective was retaliation and retaking their system, and any intelligence collected from the enemy's ruined corpses was a bonus.

However, this assault was enlightening, judging by what he could "hear" from the excited back-and-forth chatter among the intelligence officers and their infomorph equals. They gathered reams of data from the seconds-long engagement, and he knew much of that data was being fed into infomorph and VI personnel operating in speed-up simulspace environments to rapidly analyze what they were seeing.

Chi's electronic senses told him that some activity was coming from the hyperwave sensors targeting Lincoln, and he shifted his focus toward them. It was an odd sensation; he could still observe the battle over Hallis as it was rapidly concluding, but he could also observe Lincoln in turn, receiving both sets of data at the same time on top of his awareness of the activity within Chevalier's data network.

The alien fleet over the tropical garden world was pivoting in place, and the hyperwave reported energy spikes and blue-shifting light, and a quick check of their apparent heading indicated they were pointing toward Hallis. Chi immediately pinged Admiral Dolvich with a quick message warning her that the aliens were about to jump.

_"Finally,"_ she messaged back, eagerness coloring her words. Chi then caught the outbound signal she sent to their bait ships. It was the random code string indicating they were about to be attacked, and the frigates reacted quickly, retreating back into the shadow of the gas giant, putting it between themselves and the distant garden world. Wormhole gates formed before the two critically-damaged frigates, and they escaped into the gaps in spacetime, retreating to the edge of the system at a predetermined rally point. Their escape occurred mere seconds before simultaneous bursts of high-frequency radiation marked the main alien fleet jumping from Lincoln to Hallis.

They emerged over the north pole of Hallis, twenty near-simultaneous bursts of blue-shifted radiation. Every remaining ship in the alien fleet: sixteen frigates and four cruisers, spread over a thousand kilometers, and accelerating toward the battered human frigates.

_"Draw them in,"_ Dolvich ordered. _"Launch strike craft. Allied ships, prepare to execute wormgate jump on my command."_

The bays on the kilometer-long carrier slid open, exposing the hatches of armored launch tubes. The craft in the tubes had already been loaded well before the fleet had arrived in the Hoc system, and upon arrival the pilots had boarded their ships and gone through launch preparations. The moment Operation: LIGHTNING KING was initiated, the strike craft were sealed and the launch tubes were cleared of oxygen.

Within seconds of the launch order, a river of hurtling spacecraft and brilliant blue-white drive flares poured off the _Chevalier_, orienting toward the distant gas giant. The strike craft were a mixture of different types: small, fast-moving FAFNIR attack drones, larger manned Inferno interceptors, and heavily-armed Avenger assault gunships.

_"Frigates and cruisers, focus fire on enemy cruisers."_ Dolvich ordered. _"Lance authorization. Strike craft, wormhole in fifteen seconds after the capital ships and assault the frigates at point-blank."_

The coded execution string went out, and gates abruptly formed in a torrent of psychic energy before the warships, and they plunged into the openings.

Over Hallis, the aliens were spreading out, accelerating toward the nine human frigates while maneuvering into a roughly dome-shaped formation that would allow them to concentrate fire from multiple angles while avoiding each other. The human frigates were attempting to keep clear of the enemy formation's teeth, but the aliens were repositioning with that amazing speed and precision. The good news was that, so far, the aliens hadn't managed to hit any of the frigates, though not for a lack of enthusiastic effort.

Then the wormholes opened behind them at less than one thousand kilometers, and their formation started shifting even before the wave of warships appeared. Chi thought he saw a moment of hesitation when the PPA heavy cruisers came boiling out of the portals surrounding their formation. Whether it was surprise, indecision, or simply the OODA loop reacting to the unexpected arrival of so much firepower was unclear, but it lasted only a moment. The dome formation changed within seconds, the aliens whirling around, frigates accelerating to cover the cruisers left exposed by the reinforcements.

But the few seconds it took to change course gave the human cruisers time to target and fire their lances before the mass accelerator fire started criss-crossing between the two fleets. The fusion lance missiles launched from tubes amidships on the cruisers, screaming toward the alien ships. The raw firepower of the fusion warheads, based on the small but violently powerful energy generation systems of the Ethereal warships, would have been enough to annihilate any human ship they struck. Every cruiser, both the three PPA ships and the XCOM vessel, emptied their loaded tubes, unleashing twenty-four lances. Golden streaks screamed toward the aliens.

Forty kilometers from the alien ships, laser beams cut through the missiles with unerring precision. Every lance missile was blasted apart in puffs of vaporized metal.

_"Solid point defense,"_ Dolvich messaged, the words colored by curiosity and frustration. Chi agreed, though by now he was no longer surprised at the speed of enemy reactions.

Kinetic weapons slashed back and forth as the lance batteries reloaded, the outnumbered aliens redeploying their frigates to shield the cruisers, while the heavier ships poured fire into the unshielded human warships. PPA and XCOM ships kept moving, advancing to close range, while the Jovian and XCOM bait ships charged toward the rear of the alien formation. Lasers began to open fire as they reached effective range.

Then another torrent of energy erupted as lines of portals opened in front of the hundreds of strike craft still gathered off the _Chevalier's_ bow. Unlike the warships, the fighters didn't carry Durand-Vahlen Spatial Transition drives; It was impractical due to the bulk of the drives and the relative scarcity of psionics to begin with. Instead, the psionic wormhole operators on the Chevalier charged and activated specialized DV drives, creating gaping holes in spacetime before the strike craft.

There was no way the aliens could miss the blasts of emissions. They reacted immediately, once again shifting their formations, frigates forming around their cruisers, but they were already deployed to fight the human warships and would not be able to completely redeploy in time. The strike craft poured through the wormholes and fell upon the enemy, a swarm of FAFNIR drones in the lead.

The FAFNIRs were space superiority drones based off the original airborne SHIV designs from the end of the Ethereal War. They were disc-shaped spacecraft about five meters in diameter, with glowing blue thruster modules at their aft ends and a single energy weapon mounted on their hulls. Most were outfitted with lasers, refitted from their standard plasma loadout during the eighteen hour trip from the Sentry Omega relay. There were over two hundred of the drones, swarming through the space between the gates and the enemy in juking, dodging cloud.

And at forty kilometers out from their targets, just before their were in range to fire, sixty-four of the FAFNIRs were blown to pieces by enemy lasers.

The aliens' point defense network was ruthless and deadly-precise, as with nearly everything else they did. Every point-defense laser on the alien ships opened fire and killed a FAFNIR drone. The rest of the drones poured through the point defense fire, weaving and dodging, and opened fire. Beams criss-crossed, the VIs auto-prioritizing enemy point defense and blasting away at their cannons even as the weapons cycles and fired again. Fifty-nine FAFNIRs were blasted out of space in that barrage.

More than half their drones were gone in the span of seconds. It was a sobering sight.

The chatter from the intelligence analysts, both organic, and infolife, increased several times over, with calculations flying past as they tried to figure out how that lethal point defense worked.

_"Strike craft, abort strafing runs,"_ Dolvich messaged. _"Cruisers, hold fusion lances. Strike craft, launch two Hydras each. Put that point defense to the test."_

The ninety Inferno fighters and fifty-six Avenger gunships broke off outside the probable effective range of the aliens' point defense, a twisting and chaotic mass of nearly one hundred and fifty pulsing drive flares as they tried to get out of the lethal range of the enemy point-defense. Heavier and outfitted with powerful thrusters, they were better-armed and tougher than the expendable assault drones, but they paid for it with reduced maneuverability. Both types resembled the original Firestorms, with the Infernos being mostly upgraded versions of the old fighter design and Avengers being elongated and covered in heavier armor and multiple weapon turrets.

They came about, retreating toward the oncoming human cruisers and frigates, which were already laying down kinetic shots and laser fire upon the aliens. The aliens' frigates surged forward, screening their cruisers while slaughtering more of the FAFNIRS. Vaporized hull streamed off the wounded ships, but they advanced without regard for the damage they were taking.

The strike craft managed to get clear of the killing zone, and whipped around. At almost the same time, they unloaded their Hydra missile racks. The Infernos carried four Hydra missiles, while the Avengers carried ten. Based off the micromissiles carried by the Sectopod war machines the Ethereals had used, each carried five anti-ship submunitions. Each fighter launched a pair of Hydras, which split apart halfway toward their target. Each individual minution was miniscule in actual firepower.

But there were nearly fifteen hundred of them.

The alien point-defense was nearly finished with the FAFNIRs when the tidal wave of missiles poured in. Chi hoped to see something resembling panic or fear from the aliens, but instead he witnessed them reorient, their point defense weapons arraying to cover all directions, and their lasers began blasting through the oncoming missiles. The submunitions were small enough that a mere passing slash with one of the beams was enough to blow it apart in a glowing cloud of vapor, and a single laser pulse knocked out three or four per shot.

Ultimately, that meant that the aliens were able to shoot down about a third of the incoming missiles, leaving a thousand to hammer home.

The aliens' shields took the brunt of the tidal wave of missiles, the projectiles hammering the barriers and exploding harmlessly against the defenses. Even with the fire they had taken from the FAFNIR drones and the capital ships, the shields absorbed nearly ninety percent of the incoming missiles. That still left a hundred-odd munitions to pour through the collapsed barriers and slam into the alien ships. The frigates were the primary targets, and the missiles struck home with deadly effect, blowing apart hunks of hull plating and sending fiery plumes spraying into the void.

_"Damnation,"_ Dolvich hissed aloud, and Chi saw what she meant. Though the aliens were bleeding, some badly, most of their ships were still firing and maneuvering.

_"Avengers, two more Hydras, Infernos, one. Cruisers, lance them again. Wipe them out."_

* * *

><p>Elena Dolvich watched the battle, but kept her augmented reality feeds open to the data coming in from the rest of the system. While she had to focus on the battle, she knew that keeping her eyes too closely locked on the enemy could be disastrous. If there was one thing that they had learned from the Ethereal War - and every war mankind had fought before and since among itself - it was that the moment you thought you were winning was the moment things went to hell.<p>

On the data plot in the _Chevalier's_ local area, one of the infomorphs monitoring the sensors highlighted an emission burst four light seconds out. An eyeblink later, Dolvich received a message from Chi.

_"That matches the profile of the probe that we saw the day before the aliens attacked, Admiral,"_ he sent, and he didn't hide the alarm that came with those words.

Damn.

Dolvich checked how long they were spotting the contact, and her blood ran cold when she realized it was still there four seconds after they'd detected it.

She began issuing orders.

_"Navigation, get us the hell out here,"_ she messaged. _"Charge the DV drive. I don't care where, just get us at least a light-minute clear of our position."_

The enemy had backtracked _Chevalier_, and had a probe in place long enough spot the carrier. How didn't matter - maybe they could backtrack the wormholes or hyperwave transmissions. The scientists and analysts could figure that one out.

Right now, they had to move quickly. If there was one thing that the last couple of minutes of battle had made abundantly clear, it was that the aliens thought and reacted with blinding speed, which meant-

Cherenkov bursts erupted fifty thousand kilometers away from the carrier. The emissions profiles immediately resolved into four more of the alien cruisers, escorted by seven frigates, and more than eighty strike craft. An instant later, sensors were picking up incoming fire.

And an instant after that, the network security infomorphs reported electronic intrusions across the carrier's systems, including an abrupt power surge and reboot of the navigation computers and governors for both the DV drive and mass effect field generators.

A reserve fleet and sophisticated electronic warfare, likely improved by analyzing human computer networks.

_And there it is,_ Dolvich thought to herself, nodding, and began issuing orders. _What I didn't plan for._

* * *

><p>Though the humans did not understand precisely how the laser point defense systems on the alien ships operated, Dolvich's orders to saturate their point defense with another barrage of Hydras and fusion lances simultaneously was a deathblow. The intense firing of the lasers, coupled with the heat buildup from the equally intense fighting, resulted in a significant reduction in efficiency and accuracy.<p>

When the juking and weaving fighters launched and the Hydra submunitions poured in, the lasers were able to swat the majority of them out of space. At the same time, when the cruisers launched their second wave of fusion lance missiles, the shining golden spears were immediately targeted and fired upon, and the aliens defeated most of those as well.

Ninety-two Hydra submunitions made it through the defensive fire and shields, while only five of the twenty four fusion lances struck their targets, two to one cruiser and one to each of the others.

The lance missiles were a combination of Ethereal power and efficiency taken to deadly effectiveness due to human ingenuity. When they hit, they penetrated the vahlenite hulls of the alien craft and plunged deep into their hearts. White-hot annihilation exploded out, vaporizing machinery, plating, and hulls in a sudden sphere of nuclear fury. The cruisers were utterly shattered by the detonations, their remains hurled away with such speed that two of their own frigates were impaled by the debris, one exploding from the shrapnel ripping through its hull and the other shattered into multiple tumbling pieces.

The human ships closed in, many battered and wounded but all with deadly intent. They began firing on the wounded enemy frigates, hounds falling upon a stumbling prey. The battle was all but decided.

Then the surviving frigates abruptly swung around on a course pointed away from the system. Flashes of blue-shifted emissions suddenly eclipsed the alien ships, and then they vanished.

The captains of the PPA, Jovian, and XCOM ships barely had time to register the sudden disappearance of the enemy when the emergency hyperwave from the _Chevalier_ reached them.

* * *

><p>The <em>Chevalier<em> peeled away from the oncoming alien ships, her crew counting the seconds as the engineering team scrambled to get any of their FTL systems functioning again. It would take precious moments for reinforcements to return; the capital ships would need to calculate another wormhole vector and charge their DV transition drives again. The strike craft, too small to mount their own wormhole systems, would need to wait until _Chevalier's_ specialized wormholes were reactivated to jump back.

With the situation as grim as it was, Dolvich sent immediate orders to transmit final ego backups and for the soldiers on the ship to board their transports. If the carrier went down, then the Voidrangers could get the survivors off the ship and to safety.

Plasma, laser, and kinetic shots lanced out into space toward the oncoming projectiles as the Inferno combat-space-patrol and _Chevalier's_ own point defense opened fire, and several flares of light and heat marked intercepted munitions.

Then the projectiles hammered the carrier, two direct hits that struck the carrier's aft end, plowing through armor. Damage reports flashed through Dolvich's skull as the ship slewed violently from the impacts. Several aft decks penetrated. Two body deaths among the crew. One of the munitions stores penetrated - no detonations, thank God. Minimal damage to carrier power generation and hull integrity.

Damned lucky. The carrier's sheer size and vahlenite construction had prevented the enemy rounds from penetrating any further.

Alien strike craft were swooping in as the carrier lurched and changed course. Thermal profile showed them as resembling the wasp-like structure of the other alien warships, although with fatter "thorax" sections and large, prominent weapons systems housed in what looked like gimbal mounts. The Infernos were already maneuvering to intercept, but the two fighter flights only amounted to eight ships.

Those eight Infernos were loaded with four Hydras apiece, and they each launched two missiles at the oncoming enemy fighters. The aliens responded with sudden flashes of laser and kinetic weapons fire, the ships juking and twisting in violent, nearly impossible maneuvers. They shifted course at vicious right angles and accelerated at speeds that would have knocked any organic pilot unconscious, all the while gimbal-mounted weapons tracked and opened fire on the incoming missiles. Hydra submunitions exploded in the vacuum among the weaving and dodging alien craft. Despite their desperate evasive maneuvers, more than a dozen of the alien strike craft were struck and blasted out of space by the missiles.

_"Kinetic mass effect barrier strength scales with ship size,"_ one of the analysis infomorphs remarked to Dolvich. _"Plasma may have some effect on their fighters."_

Dolvich ignored the message, focusing on keeping her carrier alive.

Then the Infernos were upon the aliens while they were dodging the missiles, firing their lasers and their own gimbal-mounted kinetic weapons. They were terribly outnumbered, but their pilots' egos were already backed up and they charged straight into the enemy's teeth, their own ships maneuvering with startling grace and precision thanks to their own onboard electronics - which were modern evolutions of the old evasion and targeting modules that had been built out of alien cybernetic implants during the Ethereal War. Lines of deadly mass accelerator fire and burning laser beams seared between the fighters, and for a few moments, the Infernos held their own, burning the alien ships out of space while the enemy tried to escape the remaining Hydras. They reaped a terrible toll upon the enemy, knocking eighteen more fighters out of the sky within the first few seconds of contact, launching shining ribbons and superheated metal and exploding debris across the voice between the carrier and the alien fleet.

In fact, Dolvich noted, they were nearly as agile as the enemy fighters. Save for being forced to maneuver with the limitations of organic crewmen, they were nearly evenly matched. It was like the fighters were drones, or-

Or piloted by AI.

It clicked. In a single sudden realization, Dolvich realized what they were fighting. Absurd reaction speeds, apparent disregard for their own lives, highly-sophisticated electronic attacks.

The enemy wasn't organic. It was a networked AI lifeform of some kind.

She sent an immediate hyperwave alert to both her own ships and along with the intelligence data being hyperwaved out, for all the good it would do immediately. Enemy fire was still incoming, her fighter screen was desperately battling the enemy strike craft, and more than half of those were breaking off to attack the carrier. Dolvich braced herself as the tracks indicating enemy shots intersected the Chevalier.

The impact would have thrown her from her chair if she wasn't strapped in. As it was, the shots plowed through the carrier amidships, the smaller frigate munitions crumpling against _Chevalier's_ hull while the heavy cruiser rounds smashed through multiple decks. Casualty and damage reports flashed across Dolvich's awareness as their vital-tracker implants reported dozens of abrupt body deaths to the distributed networks. Fires erupted in aircraft maintenance compartments, launch bays, and crew sections, quickly stamped out by damage-control infomorphs where oxygen could be vented. Sections with physical crew would react more slowly, however, mostly because they had to evacuate wounded with compromised suits before the oxygen could be removed. Engine and reactor power were still close to maximum, thankfully, but an accurate penetrating shot could still hit their reactor.

Dolvich glanced at the clock. Less than ten seconds since the aliens had jumped in on top of them.

_"DV drive rebooted!"_ reported one of the engineers. _"Initializing psychic interface software! We need a few more seconds!"_

_"We can manage that,"_ Dolvich messaged with a grimace. _Chevalier_ was a tough bitch, but not invincible. Another round of fire was closing in, and the enemy strike craft were diving through the carrier's point defense weapons. The lasers and kinetic weapons sliced apart several of them, but the rest weaved and juked through the walls of lethal projectiles and light. They opened fire at close range, targeting the point guns and the breaches in the hull from previous impacts. Meanwhile the carrier's remaining fighter cover was tied down fighting the other half of the enemy strike craft fleet, and they were rapidly being cut down by sheer numbers.

Abrupt radiation emissions then flashed through space a few thousand kilometers from the alien fleet, and Dolvich's smile was grim and vicious.

"About time," she muttered.

The combined human fleet over Hallis emerged from a slew of wormholes in a ragged but aggressive formation, accelerating straight toward the alien fleet with weapons blazing. The aliens whirled to face them, abandoning their attack on the carrier to trade shots with the human fleet. As kinetic rounds screamed back and forth, Engineering messaged Dolvich again.

_"DV drive online! We can jump!"_

_"Negative,"_ she replied, and switched to the navigation and CAG channels. _"Bring our strike craft back to us. Infernos and FAFNIRs next to the carrier. Avengers with our fleet."_

It would take several seconds for the human fighters to reorient toward the wormhole coordinates. In that time, _Chevalier_ shook violently from multiple close-range impacts, shots penetrating deep into the carrier's breached hull. Further out, the human ships assaulted the alien reserve fleet with a fury, closing in and laying down kinetic fire. The aliens reaped a deadly tool, their weapons hammering the unshielded human warships. Multiple frigates were ablaze or flying out of control, gutted and powerless.

XCOM needed to understand how those kinetic barriers worked. Dolvich knew they couldn't keep fighting an enemy whose defenses rendered their most powerful weapons impotent. And their strike craft mounted their own FTL systems; some kind of miniaturized mass effect drive? That was something humanity could use to deadly effect, if they could figure out how to replicate it.

The wormholes opened again, and close to a hundred Infernos and a few surviving FAFNIRs erupted, falling upon the enemy fighters. With numerical superiority on their side, it was a vicious slaughter, even with the aliens instantly responding and turning toward the new threat. Further out, the Avengers joined the main fleet.

_"Hydras and lances,"_ Dolvich ordered. _"Empty the tubes."_

The torrent of missiles swept over the enemy, and their point defense responded. The Avengers emptied their racks of Hydras, and the aliens swatted many of the submunitions out of the sky. Lance missiles were intermixed with the Hydras, but the aliens saw them coming and prioritized the nuclear ordnance. Of the twenty-four lance missiles, only one made it through the enemy point defense, but that one lance annihilated a cruiser. The few hundred Hydras that made it through the point defense hammered the cruiser shields and gutted the frigates.

The human fleet closed in and relentlessly pounded the surviving aliens. With their shields weakened or collapsed, they finally brought their deadliest armaments to bear. Green plasma bolts exploded through space toward the alien warships, and the impact was catastrophic. Entire sections of hull were superheated and vaporized on impact. Superstructures deformed and melted under the barrage, with even their mighty vahlenite hulls unable to disperse direct contact with the human plasma weapons.

One cruiser detonated in a brilliant plume of fire, and another shattered amidships as the plasma tore it apart. The final remaining alien ship took several direct hits before abruptly vanishing in a burst of blue-shifted emissions as it accelerated to faster than light speeds, two severely-damaged frigates joining it a second later.

Silence fell across the Chevalier's bridge, until Admiral Dolvich began issuing orders.

_"All ships and fighters, begin search and rescue operations. Compile casualty and damage reports. Fighters, staggered rearmament. Begin repair work as soon as possible."_ She paused, looking over the debris fields from the remaining enemy ships, both over Hallis and here in deep space.

_"Colonel Canales, detail several platoons for salvage and boarding operations. The rest of your men should load up ground combat kit. We're not done here."_

* * *

><p><strong>PRIORITY ONE HYPERWAVE TRANSMISSION: PRIORITY ALPHA CHANNEL<strong>

**TIMESTAMP: 0935 HOURS ZULU STANDARD TIME, 21/8/2103**

**FROM: STRIKE TASKFORCE SEVEN, DELTA SQUADRON, REAR ADMIRAL ELENA DOLVICH, XCS CHEVALIER**

**TO: XCOM TASKFORCE SEVEN CENTRAL COMMAND**

Strike Deven Delta and allied forces have secured the orbital space of the Hoc system. Successful destruction of seven enemy cruiser-equivalents and twenty-eight frigate equivalents, as well as eighty strike craft. Current casualties are as follows: _XCS Waterloo, JSF Unyielding, JSF Breakthrough, USNA Ohio, USNA Memphis, USNA Tampico._ Attached body death list, permanent death list, and recovered cortical stack lists will follow.

Salvage of intact enemy components is underway.

Ground operations will begin within the next six hours to liberate Lincoln's population centers and Hallis' orbital habitats.

**END TRANSMISSION**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: <strong>You may have noticed I'm posting these chapters very quickly. That's because I had the prologue and first two chapters already written (and I posted them on Spacebattles a week early). So it might be a bit before we get to the next chapter, which will have some interesting revelations.

Also, regarding the electronic warfare attack (which has been argued on both here and SB), the geth work _very, very fast,_ (not to mention they _are_ computer code) and electronic attacks between ships are possible in Mass Effect canon. That's one of EDI's jobs. If EDI can do it, so can the geth.


	4. Chapter Three: Operation SWIFT CONUNDRUM

_**Chapter Three: Operation: SWIFT CONUNDRUM**_

* * *

><p><strong>Research Report: Initial Findings Re: Alien Technology and Remains<strong>

**Lead Researcher: Doctor Prokhor Zakharov, Head of Research, XCS Chevalier**

**Project Codename: "Flashlight"**

_It is unfortunate that little of our foe's technology survived the engagement, although I do appreciate the fact that our military required extreme means to defeat the enemy defenses. However, while none of the larger enemy ships survived the violence required to bring them down, the smaller ships were taken in sufficient condition that we could begin disassembly of crucial components._

_First, we must confirm that Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich's mid-battle theory was correct. The alien life form appears to be a distributed synthetic intelligence. We found not a single indication of organic life, beyond industrially-created organic compounds that were components of the ship's equipment. We did recover several damaged "bodies" of the alien's "crew" which appear to be remote-operated humanoid platforms or drones._

_Data recovery was limited at best. By design, it appears that the aliens damaged or wiped their own computer systems to prevent data capture by our forces. However, with some reconstruction we have managed to rebuild fragments of both computer data and audio files. Though the operating system and computer language are largely alien, we have managed to isolate what appear to be identification tags, made up of lengthy numerical designations and a single short, repeating code phrase. I do not know if this identifier code can be translated into something we can understand at this time, but we believe this may be what the species calls itself._

_However, the soldiers sent to salvage the remains of the ships refer to the alien platforms as "flashlight-heads" after the optical systems in their "head" sections. Until we have a better name for them, I would recommend we use the designator "Flashlight" for their platforms. History has shown us that no matter what silly name the men in the field come up with for the enemy, we invariably take their capabilities seriously, and treat our collective foes with utmost respect._

* * *

><p>"When we get down there, I want to make one of those Flashlight heads into a hat."<p>

Major Jack Harper scowled as he heard that line cross one of the squad feeds, delayed by a second or two as one of the infomorphs monitoring his battalion's comms flagged the transmission and bounced it his way. He cut into that communication line.

_"No trophies, Private,"_ he said, and that conversation died abruptly, in the manner that only a commissioned officer intruding into enlisted affairs could. _"The scientists will get jealous."_

A round of nervous chuckles came back, and Harper disconnected.

He turned his senses back outward, to the Voidranger that was descending into the atmosphere of Lincoln. The troopship shivered as it started into the edges of the atmosphere, its hull heating up at the tremendous speeds they were moving. Harper felt a faint twinge of nervousness, but he easily clamped it down; he'd been through close to a hundred Voidranger drops, most of them into friendly air but more than a couple into potentially hostile worlds.

This, however, was the first time he was dropping into a definitely hostile atmosphere.

He switched AR feeds to the reports from the HULU drones that had been dropped ahead of the Voidrangers into the atmosphere. Like the dropships, they were surrounded by an armored shell intended to protect them from entry heat and enemy fire. Unlike the Voidrangers, their armor was an ablative shell that burned off during entry, causing them to resemble meteorites. As an added precaution, the HULUs' ablative shells were constructed out of shaped metals generally matching those found in the system's asteroids, in case someone pointed a spectrometer at them to gauge their composition.

By now the drones had already reached the bottom of their descent and had started shedding the shells. The moment they were clear, they fired retro-rockets to slow their descent before activating sensory cloaks and vanishing. For a few dangerous moments, however, an observer would have noted the metallic skins and flexing squid-like tentacles of the drones while the rockets were engaged.

Thus, Harper was unsurprised when abrupt barrages of gunfire slashed up from part of Lincoln's capital city of Mariana and swatted more than two-thirds of the HULUs out of the sky. He watched the tracks of enemy fire, sensors trailing them back to positions on the ground. The volume of projectiles indicated rapid-fire mass accelerators putting up tens of thousands of rounds; even against vahlenite armor those would rend the hulls of the Voidrangers.

_"Flashlight AA,"_ he messaged, and bounced the points of origin. _"Request fire support."_

_"Acknowledged, Hades Actual,"_ came the response from one of Chevalier's infomorphs. _"Remain clear of fire corridor."_

The Voidrangers began to drift apart, getting clear of the projected lines of fire from the orbital fleet. It would take a couple of seconds to target the Flashlight positions, and during that time Harper brought up a sensor overlay of the city and reviewed it.

Mariana was a first-year garden-world colony city, which meant that everything had been focused on getting infrastructure set up for a massive influx of colonists from Earth. The first wave of colonists had just started coming in two months before the Flashlights had attacked, and they had been housed in complexes of mass-produced colony modules. Each was a blunt-edged rectangle ten meters long and half that wide and tall; with two or three linked together, they could provide a small but comfortable living or working space. Within the city they were built into "stacks" of modules three to four stories tall, in neat, orderly city blocks.

The colony had been established along a temperate beach at the middle northern latitudes where weather was ideal for space-to-surface operations. With the exception of towers for communications and a large central spaceport consisting of huge walled landing platforms, the city was broadly uniform in height and structural density. Smaller satellite communities had been set up here and there further inland, with one ocean platform twenty kilometers out at sea.

Orbital recon had identified enemy positions quickly once the human fleets had taken space. The Flashlights had used an entirely predictable and ruthlessly efficient method of controlling the city: they landed troop concentrations outside the city to cover the roads and mag-lev rails running to the outer communities and then advanced into Mariana. Orbital scans showed the remains of their landing positions and logistical bases, which had clearly been dismantled and moved into the city where the module stacks could cover them from the human ships in orbit, all in the timeframe between the aliens controlling space and losing it to the humans.

Harper tried to imagine the kind of organization and coordination it would take to disassemble an entire staging area and move it into a hostile city in half an hour. For a human army, simply getting them to stop offensive operations and grab anything but basic portable supplies in that timeframe would be a challenge. The Flashlights acted fast.

The city itself was partially shrouded in smoke and haze from the fighting over the last day, though it wasn't as intense as he might have expected in a fully contested urban assault. Harper had led troops into cities torn by rioting or civil strife before, and the destruction was far more extensive. And those ravaged cityscapes had been nothing compared to the widespread devastation the Ethereals had routinely unleashed upon the cities they had terrorized. In Mariana, some of the module stacks were ablaze or had been smashed to twisted wreckage, but entire sections of the city had remained undamaged.

Somewhere in that city, however, was an army of murderous AIs and thousands of humans who had been unable to evacuate. Some of them might have gotten their backups offworld, but that was a small comfort for the egos still in their bodies.

_"Hammer down,"_ messaged one of the air traffic infomorphs, and Harper switched his views to incorporate the incoming fire. Kinetic shots flashed past on his augmented reality display, striking the buildings where the Flashlights had concealed their AA guns. Flares of light and blooms of expanding smoke and debris marked direct hits.

Harper nodded, a rush of satisfaction sliding through him at the destruction of the enemy, and he shifted his feeds to the HULU drones' point-to-point comms. He caught images of the destruction at street level, with jerks from the drone cameras as they moved away from flying debris and navigated through smoke and dust. Other HULUs were moving through undamaged sections of the city, which were eerily quiet. Here and there, the drones came across bodies: some were humans, their bodies riddled with kinetic wounds that left blood sprayed in wide arcs. Other corpses were Flashlight platforms, their mechanical bodies melted and twisted by laser and plasma fire. One Flashlight was hanging from a wall, a gleaming white spike the length of a man's forearm impaling it through the chest. Someone down there had been packing an alloy cannon.

One of the feeds caught his eye, however. A HULU was moving silently through a module habitat. It was fairly common: generic gray-white walls, some painting and pictures hanging on the walls, a plant growing in a carefully shielded potting cylinder. Kitchenette section, couch, entertainment suite, a bed in a partitioned room. Assorted small knickknacks and pictures on simple square tables.

A Flashlight lay in the doorway, the platform cored through the torso section by a laser beam. The habitat's owner, or maybe someone who had just fled into this particular room, lay in the middle of the living area. Blood was drenched across the couch, but the body lay in the center of the room. A smear of blood stretched from the couch to the middle of the module, and the body lay on its stomach. The once-living was a dark-haired and olive-skinned man wearing the usual colonist fatigues and utility belt.

It didn't lay in a natural position, with limbs splayed or bent like it had fallen. The body lay facedown, legs straight and arms at its side. A thin pool of blood had gathered around it. Harper could see exit wounds in the man's back, and another wound in the neck, at the base of the skull.

The cortical stack that nearly every human carried was located there, right where the brain stem met the spinal column. It was a tiny data storage unit encased in a shell of synthdiamond. Altogether, it was about the size of a grape, embedded within the brainstem. That little device was constantly updated by nanobots mapping the brain's neural architecture to maintain an evolving record of the host's mind and memories. If they died, the stack could be recovered to be uploaded into a new body. It was the insurance that allowed mankind to remain immortal.

A permanent record of the ego. To some, the very soul of a person.

Except this man's stack had been deliberately, neatly cut out after death.

It was rare that Jack Harper felt a chill. But seeing that image turned his blood to ice.

He immediately sent a message back up the chain to Chevalier, carrying that image and the hideous implications.

He checked the mission clock. Two minutes until they hit.

Major Jack Harper planned for First Battalion, callsign Hades, to live up to that name.

* * *

><p>Admiral Elena Dolvich stared at the data from the HULU drone, and found her heart beating in a way it had not done in a long time. Hard and fast, but without the icy spikes of fear to accompany the machinegun hammering. There was instead a deep, simmering heat - a controlled but deadly fury.<p>

The Flashlights were taking cortical stacks. For what, she didn't know. Interrogation, to learn more about humanity? Flensing for data and subsequent annihilation? Destruction to ensure that their victims were permanently dead?

It didn't matter.

_"Colonel Canales,"_ she messaged.

_"Yes ma'am?"_ the colonel replied as his troops descended.

_"They are stealing our egos,"_ she growled into the text. _"Prosecute the Flashlights, but watch your fire. Our mission remains the same, but we now have to watch for stacks as well as live civilians."_

_"Understood, ma'am,"_ Canales replied, determination and a familiar, controlled outrage leaking into the message. _"Smashdown will begin in one minute."_

* * *

><p>"Smashdown" was a simple maneuver XCOM had devised to deal with hostile airspace where the enemy knew they were coming, and XCOM needed to secure a landing zone for ground troops. The first half of the maneuver had already been carried out by the HULU drones and kinetic weapons in orbit, identifying and neutralizing enemy anti-air. XCOM planners had then selected their landing zone based on orbital scans and the patterns of enemy emplacements and numbers as outlined by the HULUs. Optimal drop zone for Hades battalion, they determined, was west of the spaceport.<p>

The second half came as the Voidrangers descended and began to retract their armored shells. The dropships were built much like the old Skyrangers XCOM had used to fight the Ethereals and in the subsequent years of mop-up. The organization was nothing if not traditional. They had a similar profile and carried the swing-wings of their predecessors, extended during atmospheric flight. Unlike their predecessors, they used the same drive engines as the Infernos and other space-capable human aircraft. Also, unlike the old Skyrangers, these dropships had several tube-like capsules clamped to their undersides, and when the coded execution string went out, they tubes were released and began to scream down toward the surface.

Some of the tubes were long and narrow, while others were much wider. Each had a tapering end, weighted to keep it pointing down, and maneuvering thrusters to keep it on target. Vahlenite casing armored the tubes, although they couldn't withstand concentrated anti-air fire anymore than the Voidrangers that dropped them..

But thanks to the standard "blast the AA from orbit" procedure coupled with their rapid velocity on descent, the drop tubes were safe from most threats, save the terminal one that they faced on arrival at their destination.

The drop tubes fired retro-rockets as they passed below the effective envelope of anti-air weapons, but even with the shift in velocity, the tubes crashed hard enough to shatter concrete and punch through the rooftops of buildings. Debris went flying from the impacts, and the echo of the crashes could be heard for kilometers in all directions, even over the continuing rubles from the destroyed anti-air weapons.

Hence the name of the maneuver: smashdown.

The tubes were, for the most part, standing upright. Part of the tubes' sides slid outward, and a rush of transparent, overpressured hydrostatic shock-gel poured over the rooftops and streets - the main reason why the impacts from the smashdown drop-tubes didn't destroy their contents on impact. Once the tubes opened far enough, machinery began moving, and XCOM set foot on Lincoln - metaphorically-speaking, in some cases.

Smashdown operations were too risky for organic bodies. Even if you were fully backed up, it was still a waste of manpower and resources to send a soldier down who could get killed by the impact even with the shock-gel. This, combined with the high risk of the smashdown operations, demanded that non-organic personnel led the way.

One series of crash tubes deployed along the outer perimeter of the landing zone. From the gel-filled interiors of these tubes emerged quadrupedal figures of black-and-brown painted vahlenite metal. They were shaped like wolves or hunting hounds, standing at a man's stomach at their shoulders, with canine-shaped heads. Their jaws were filled with bladed teeth, and on their shoulders were gimbal turrets mounting a mass accelerator carbine and stubby alloy cannon. Extending from their hindquarters were one-and-a-half meter long, whiplike tails of bladed metal.

The FENRIR-type Light Armored Reconnaissance Systems bounded away from their landing zones, shedding their shock gel as they clambered up or down walls, rushed down streets, and vanished under optical camouflage cloaks, joining the HULU drones in scouting the city. Small launchers in their gimbal turrets fired cherry-sized capsules into buildings as they passed, releasing short-lived microbot surveillance swarms to search the structures for hostiles, survivors, or anything else of interest.

Closer into the landing zone, wider tubes opened their panels further out to accommodate the ODIN SHIVs crammed inside. They floated out, dripping gel off their gleaming disc-shaped, three meter wide bodies. The ODINs were an adaptation of both the hovering SHIV frames that XCOM had pioneered and the compact weapons and computational capacity of the Ethereals' Cyberdisc support machines. Unlike either of those older designs, however, the ODINs featured cyberbrains that allowed a human ego to sleeve into and control them directly, although most were remotely operated or controlled by VIs.

The last set of drop tubes had to extend their panels up and out to allow their occupants to clamber out. They moved with startling agility despite their two-and-a-half meter heights, virtually leaping out from their tubes and smashing to the ground in a mass of moving vahlenite metal and mechanical limbs. The MEC units were a hybrid of exoskeletal suits and cybernetic limbs; their human operators were encased in the torso, and the mechanical limbs they wore as part of their day-to-day bodies were removed, allowing the operators to interface with the machines using the same limb-to-brainstem connections.

The MEC troopers hefted boxy particle beam cannons, their exoskeletons laden with additional weapons depending on the particular trooper's specialization and preferences: missile and grenade launchers, kinetic strike modules, plasma flamethrowers, demolitions equipment, and heavy alloy cannons.

The MECs and ODINs advanced in pairs, fanning out and taking elevated positions at the intersections around the designated landing zones while scanning local frequencies for friendly or hostile transmissions. They immediately caught active, heavily-encrypted data streams, no doubt Flashlight communications, and began sending those back to the fleet.

XCOM's mechanized spearhead made no direct contact with the Flashlights, however, and sent signals back up into the atmosphere to the Voidrangers descending toward the city. With their immediate landing zone secured, and the orbital guns ready to open fire, the two battalions began to descend at full speed, swooping toward the city.

* * *

><p>Major Jack Harper was waiting at the back ramp of his Voidranger, surrounded by a dozen other XCOM soldiers who were rising from their crash seats in the troop bay. They all wore current-generation Titan armor, suits of vahlenite plating and nanoweave mesh over powered synthetic muscle charged by a tiny elerium core. The Major was the smallest one of the soldiers present, as the majority of their bodies had undergone combat gene modding. They generally fell into an "olympian" or "fury" preset, resulting in them being a few centimeters taller and many kilograms heavier due to enhanced muscle and bone density.<p>

When the ramp lowered, the XCOM troopers clambered down, weapons shouldered, sweeping and securing the rooftop of the module stack. The maneuver was mostly unnecessary, as a MEC pair and a group of ODINs had already secured the roof, and two more Voidrangers' worth of soldiers had touched down beforehand, but paranoia was a healthy trait in a combat zone. Harper followed them down, a laser carbine in hand but not shouldered.

He turned to peer around the rooftop, eyeing the columns of smoke rising into the blue ceiling above them, marbled by thin white clouds. The local climate was supposed to be temperate, but Harper could feel an oppressive, humid heat wash over him. Salty ocean air intermixed with the acrid smoke and rot endemic of urban warfare. Aside from the distant rumbles of a few structures still slowly falling apart, and the howl of Voidranger engines, the city was quiet.

Odd, that the Flashlights weren't contesting the XCOM landings. With the exception of the AA guns and the Flashlight corpses scattered about, they had not seen any sign of the aliens' presence. He would have expected them to be assaulting the landing sites the moment the smashdown had occurred; it was the most vulnerable time for any landing, and was what Harper would have done in their position.

Unless the enemy's numbers were not as significant as they had believed. If the Flashlights had not deployed as many ground troops as estimated, they might have opted for a defensive posture in anticipation of a counteroffensive. Ambush and maneuver inside the city rather than expending manpower - or alienpower, or mechpower - in a standup fight at the LZs.

_"Hades Battalion is deploying,"_ he messaged Colonel Canales as they finished bringing down the rest of the troops. "_Our LZ is secure. All boots on the ground, waiting for the GRENDELs to land. Expanding and securing our area-of-operations."_

_"Understood, Hades Actual,"_ Colonel Canales replied back. _"No change to the current deployment plan."_

It was a more verbose exchange than one normally had with radio-audio comms, but then, they could direct-message text with no loss of data, making detailed communications nearly effortless.

Harper opened up city maps and overlaid locations of enemy bodies and the AA guns' positions, and checked them against his area of operations: the west and northern sections of the city. Electronic warfare-specialist infomorphs were working their way into the city's mesh network, but were encountering resistance from Flashlight runtimes that had already infiltrated the wireless systems. Still, they were able to get him general information from the mesh network on the city, and most interesting were the areas of Mariana that the Flashlights didn't want him to see.

The combined intelligence picture gave him a general idea of where the enemy was positioned, and he quickly ran through the layout of the city, marking strategic points and scouted areas. He quickly began assembling a map of where the enemy was most likely positioned and where they were less likely to be at, based on the patterns he was seeing. They appeared to be centered around the main spaceport and the western half of the city, although he refused to label any area, even the battalions' LZs, as completely secured. They just didn't know the Flashlights' ground capabilities.

He descended through a rooftop door into the module stack, which was being swept by a pair of XCOM squads room by room, deploying recon swarms to secure the building's nooks and crannies. The module apartment would serve as Harper's command post, although he didn't need much more than an intact roof over his head. Almost all his battalion command staff were infomorphs and virtual intelligences operating in orbit. He could detect them conversing back and forth, their messages pinging against his consciousness as they passed reports and updated the city overlays, new data appearing as the HULU and FENRIR drones reconnoitered.

Outside, there was a rumbling howl of engines, signaling the presence of a Voidranger-HL, the largest and heaviest of the dropships. Harper shifted to view that aircraft's feeds, and could see that it was descending over an intersection just outside, with just enough room to deploy its cargo.

The GRENDEL UHIV slammed down to the pavement a moment later, and with a terrible scraping of metal claws on pavement, the heavy weapons platform rose and began to prowl down the street, weapons extended and ready to fire.

One of his battalion infomorphs pinged Harper, and he switched away from the view of the GRENDEL as it advanced toward the the enemy-held section of the city. He received an immediate report that had him pause and then switch to incoming feeds.

One of the FENRIRs had made contact with the Flashlights, within half a block of where he'd predicted the enemy was most likely to be positioned, less than a quarter of a kilometer from the spaceport perimeter.

Harper was messaging orders and updates to the battalion as the feed came in, and he received acknowledgements from the units coordinating with fleet air support. The drone was crouched in an apartment module halfway up one of the stacks, peering across a street with alternating infrared and visual sensors, along with passive radio and EM observation gear. Through a thin pall of smoke and haze, it could spy a pair of Flashlight platforms standing on a rooftop across the street, weapons in hand.

They matched the platforms that the salvage teams had recovered from their wrecked ships: lean shapes with organic curves and lines to their bodies, which were built out of a composite, quasi-vahlenite alloy that was painted a dull gray-white to hide the reflective sheen. Their "heads" were mounted on curving, flexible necks, almost serpentine in shape, with a faintly-glowing cylindrical optical cluster in the center that gave them their nickname. Like their bodies, their weapons were metallic but built in flowing, organic lines.

He needed more information. Harper sent that message along, and a moment later the FENRIR edged forward. Its pneumatic launcher loaded and fired a recon swarm capsule across the street into a window of the module stack. That would unleash enough microbots to sweep the entire building.

A heartbeat after the capsule was launched, a red line abruptly intersected the FENRIR's head, and then the drone's face exploded, most of its feeds going dark. The drone leapt back, passive sensors elsewhere on its body giving it a good view of its surroundings, and it began feeding data back as the recon swarm expanded and began sweeping the interior of the structure.

They had sniper overwatch. Unsurprising. And the recon swarm was reporting more contacts inside the building. Flashlight platforms were on the ground level and watching the street, but the drone projected the sniper shot came from a building further down the street.

Other FENRIR drones were converging on the site, and Harper began issuing engagement orders to his troops, moving several platoons forward. Organic soldiers, MECs, and ODIN drones advanced, and HULUs slipped into the enemy-occupied zone.

_"Colonel,"_ he messaged Canales as other FENRIR units came under fire. _"My troops have made contact. Moving to engage."_

* * *

><p>"Begin session," spoke a soft, Russian-accented voice.<p>

The Chevalier was not a science vessel, but it was the nerve center for Delta Squadron of Strike Seven, which afforded it a substantial laboratory section and medical wing. Most of the time the lab was used to supplement studies of star systems and unusual phenomena, and it became particularly busy when xenobiological studies were warranted as a result of a life-bearing world being discovered. It had never actually been used for its original purpose until today; in fact, it had been a very long time since any XCOM lab had autopsied a dead, hostile alien.

"Subject: Flashlight Platform Type Two, Identifier FL-02-OLK-7. As with previous versions of the Type Two, this one was recovered from Flashlight frigate designation FLS-OLK-22. Cause of deactivation appears to be shrapnel from a piercing shot that ruptured the deck it was operating on."

It was, admittedly, a remarkably dull affair after the seventh dissection of the same alien - particularly when those aliens were mass produced drone platforms.

"Initiating drill. Standby for mapping injection."

Doctor Prokhor Zakharov was the only scientist physically present in the room, his white environment suit glaring under the harsh overhead lights. Others - scientists, military, and intelligence personnel - watched from outside the perimeter of the containment chamber or were observing via drones flitting about the room. The chamber was a simple cube of transparent armor-crystal with a slab in the center, upon which rested one of the serpentine, humanoid Flashlight drones. A collection of tools held in long, flexible mechanical arms extended from the center of the ceiling: saws, blades, pry bars, samplers, injectors, drills, and more. Vahlenite armor shutters were on standby to slam down and isolate the chamber, with ECM and psi-jammers ready to cut off any outgoing signals.

But Zakharov had no reason to suspect such security was needed. The Flashlight drones had wiped their memory cores before or upon being disabled, rendering them inert to the point where there wasn't anything functional remaining in their processors. Even so, he had taken the precaution of sleeving into his backup body, a model that, while not quite as mentally adept as his day-to-day unit, was far more expendable, not to mention fitted for close-in laboratory work. The specialized tools and sensors, mounted on the secondary limbs affixed to his backbone just below the shoulder blades, were hovering over the alien corpse.

He leaned over the drone, directing the machinery overhead to extend a drill into the Flashlight's outer casing. A piercing whine sounded as the drill cut into the drone's armor. Zakharov's arms descended around the smoking hole as the drill retracted, and one of them extended an injector, releasing a small package of mapping microbots.

Several seconds passed as the swarm did its work, and a wireframe schematic of the Flashlight appeared over the corpse. Data streams between the other scientists and technicians flitted across his awareness, but he ignored them, focusing on his task.

"Interior structure matches previous Type Two Flashlight platforms," Zakharov continued, after overlaying the schematic over previous platforms of the same type they had disassembled. Save the damage that had disabled the aliens, they aligned perfectly. The salvage teams had encountered a slightly different variation, with heavier armor and different element zero manipulation systems. The Type Twos were the most common, however.

"As with the other Type Twos," he continued, "the interior structure is remarkably compact, with significant open space within the 'chest cavity'," He outlined the thick collection of cabling running up the center of the flexible mechanical "backbone" of the platform. More than half the internal volume in the drone was taken up by empty space. Unless a mass accelerator hit the central cabling and power core, damage to the platform would be minimal.

"The central cognitive stack and electrical-conductive fluids are remarkably undamaged in this specimen," he continued. "Shrapnel damage appears to be localized around the central power generation systems. Some sections of the cognitive matrix may be intact. I doubt we'll get actual cognitive processing code or stored data from the remains, but the hardware looks very salvageable in this specimen. We will initiate our first casing breach now."

More saws began to whine, and they descended from the central apparatus. Zakharov's arms joined them, poking and probing among the flying sparks, prying open a larger part of the casing.

"As with previous models," he droned, "casing composition is an alloy with a similar spectral reading as our own vahlenite, although with a differing composition. This version is resistant to laser and plasma drilling, but less so to kinetic drilling. Projected capacity to resist military-grade plasma and laser weaponry is… considerable.

"As with the other Type Twos, this Flashlight model has significant element zero masses in components recessed into the casing, particularly in the forearms. These may be generators for the alien 'shields' or some other mass effect manipulation technology. There are very small interface ports mounted in the casing, presumably for interacting with equipment and weaponry. We have identified what may be launchers for microbot swarms, presumably for reconnaissance or mapping purposes. Samples of microbots have been taken for analysis."

The saws ceased, and he pulled open a section of the chest plating, exposing the glowing, blue-white cables wrapping around the central spinal column of the drone. Tens of thousands of cords, ranging from finger-thick cables to hair-thin wiring weaved into a complex mesh within the machine.

"I must reiterate my surprise at the sophistication of this drone," Zakharov continued as he worked. "The internal complexity of something as small and apparently utilitarian as these machines is remarkable, especially when compared with our own drones. These appear to be more akin to a networked warship cyberbrain or a GRENDEL walker than a disposable soldier mech."

The saws began to whine again.

"Beginning second casing breach now," he droned. "We will attempt extraction of specimen's cognitive processing center…."

* * *

><p>Doctor Viktor Zakharov watched himself conduct the dissection with only half an eye to what his fork was doing. He had already decided that if he was going to continue autopsying the Flashlight bodies, it would be best if a short-lived alpha fork handled the dull, repetitive duties in the backup body while he observed what was truly intriguing<p>

He was tapped into a simulspace environment that was currently inhabited by most of their analysts and researchers, many of them either infomorphs or physical bodies tapped into the datastreams from the surface. Surrounding them in the white void were hundreds of floating screens, each of them displaying transmitted feeds from the units moving - and now fighting - on the surface. Figures floated and shifted freely through simulspace, many humanoid copies of their physical bodies, while others were ghostly apparitions or more imaginative forms: mythological beasts, machines, spacecraft, shifting abstract images, and one particular researcher who appeared as an enormous black cube, since everyone was autocensoring his actual avatar of constantly-shifting versions of human genetalia.

Discussing your research notes with a giant blue barbed phallus was… distracting, after all.

Technically, Zakharov wasn't wasn't part of the XCOM Direct Action chain of command, being a member of the Research division - although in practical matters, once the plasma started flying, everyone in the Direct Action division was above him. XCOM's internal structure was very clearly defined: Direct Action handled combat operations, Research handled non-psionic scientific and engineering endeavours, Intelligence was responsible for gathering information - both on outside and internal threats to humanity - and Psionic Corps was responsible for finding, training and policing the Gifted. Where the interests of divisions intersected, the one who had jurisdiction over a particular area was king.

What all that meant was that he was technically not supposed to be viewing this data, as this was crucial up-to-date battlefield intelligence. In reality, command wanted their best minds studying everything they could get on the aliens to advise the troops on the ground. It was an XCOM tradition springing from the Ethereal War, though Zakharov simply made it a point to not butt in to chastise the troops if they needed to blow the enemy up.

Zakharov's current body had a number of augments to enhance cognitive functions, among them being a multitasking implant that let him fork off multiple short-term copies of himself to process the wealth of data he was receiving. In the simulspace environment, he could see a dozen-plus copies of himself: tall, lean, dark-haired and pale-skinned, wearing separate sets of goggles over each eyes, one green and one red. Purely cosmetic, of course, but they helped differentiate him from the other avatars. Zakharov and all of his forks were busy dividing attention between a number of feeds while also tasking VIs and his research assistants to monitoring others of less import. He picked out select data streams from HULU and FENRIR drones and XCOM infantry squads as they began to encounter the aliens on the ground.

Two more FENRIR units had been destroyed within seconds of the initial unit's destruction, along with another of the flying drones. Hostile contact was being reported all along the human line of advance, with rapid reports of multiple critical injuries. He locked into video footage of different points of contact, and focused on one specific set of data feeds from a fireteam engaging the Flashlights from the rooftops.

The XCOM team was a standard six-man squad, which was as far as Zakharov understood military organization. It had the core of a team leader with supporting equipment, heavy weapons specialist, marksman, and assault specialist, with the last two members of this unit made up of a combat medic and demolitions engineer. These troops wore standard heavy-assault Titan suits, turning them into armored, bulky figures of gray urban-camouflaged plating and artificial muscle. As far as he had been told, the team's makeup would change depending on the mission; active XCOM platoons and even companies were very malleable entities.

This team was fighting Flashlights on a module stack rooftop, having crossed over the intersecting street with grappling lines, Titan armor, and gene-augmented bones and muscles. It was vicious, close-quarters, and rapid-fire; the red beams of laser and blinding green fury of plasma intermixing with the blue-tinged tracers of Flashlight weapons. They maneuvered with an amazing clarity of information and coordination. XCOM troopers advanced aggressively, encircling and flanking Flashlight positions while others laid down torrents of suppressing fire or dropped chaff and ECM smoke upon enemy positions to disrupt their sensors. The Flashlights answered almost instantly, the serpentine platforms repositioning as fast as the XCOM troopers advanced and laying down constant, almost endless suppressing fire, as though ammunition was a nonfactor in their battle plans.

Zakharov watched closely as plasma weaponry from a heavy cannon toted by the squad's weapons trooper washed across a trio Flashlights hiding inside a module on the rooftop. The torrent of brilliant green-white violence splashed over the metal and ceramic of the module's wall, melting and blasting apart the aliens' cover. The doctor focused on that image, watching closely through the trooper's own tactical readings. Data from the man's augmented senses and helmet display showed the plasma tearing through the building but stopping half a meter from the aliens themselves.

The same kind of barrier that had stopped their ship-to-ship weapons, but scaled down to the infantry level. Fascinating.

But unlike in vacuum, the air around the aliens conducted radiative heat far more effectively. He could see the aliens' armor begin to glow a bright white, and the trio of aliens scattered the moment the superheated gas struck their shields. Two of them managed to leap away from the barrage and reach safety, while the third lurched away from the plasma before abruptly collapsing, metal sloughing off in glowing white rivulets and its glowing eye abruptly shattering.

_"Radiative heat from plasma bombardment can overwhelm their armor and overheat internals,"_ Zakharov noted to himself. _"Barriers are able to halt kinetic energy and physical material like bullets or plasma, but they cannot defeat energy like directed photons or thermal radiation. This has to be some new application of element zero. A gravity-based defensive system, perhaps? The computational and energy requirements would be significant, and it would have to be an active defense system to be anything economical for infantry deployment."_

He shifted to another viewpoint on the rooftop, where an assaulter was moving through a set of connected, open-air agricultural modules while two other teammates poured laser and plasma fire into pair of Flashlights shooting from the windows of the prefab structure. The assaulter burst into the module, and the drones spun on her, opening fire instantly. The shots whipped past and around her, none touching the XCOM trooper as she snapped up her alloy cannon. Zakharov knew there was nothing supernatural about what he witnessed; the assaulter was equipped with a fury morph and reaction-enhancing gene and cybernetic implants. She was evading almost before the enemy fired their weapons.

As she closed in, the assaulter's alloy cannon snapped up and fired, launching a penetrator spike into a Flashlight's midsection. The gleaming silvery spear lanced into the target's torso and staked it to a wall in a spray of white electro-conductive fluid.

The assaulter ducked behind cover as the cannon loaded another spike into the chamber, but when she stepped out to fire another shot, a glowing blue-white hexagonal wall had suddenly formed between the drone and the human. The assaulter fired anyway, and the vahlenite spike impacted the barrier, smashing against it and bouncing off.

Zakharov leaned forward, staring intently. What the hell was that? Temporary freestanding kinetic barrier? His mind began to race as he tried to piece together how that could even work.

Utterly _fascinating_.

The assaulter fell back, loading another spike, and then a brilliant red line sliced into the drone's midsection, melting through the armor. The drone toppled from the laser strike, emitting a sudden burst of stuttering, harsh audio. Zakharov's eyebrows rose on his simulspace avatar at the sound. Some form of final data transmission? He messaged one of his forks, telling him to collect as much emissions data from that timestamp as possible from the various sensor systems in that area, before moving on.

The doctor took a mental step back from the battlefield, watching from a wider perspective of collated data from drones and troopers. Two FENRIR drones had reached the rooftop and were flanking another group of Flashlights, leaping among the drones. Flares of electricity arced off one of the Flashlight drones, scrambling the electronics of one of the mechanical dogs, but the other fell upon the alien drone with its alloy cannon, pinning it against the wall with a short spike and then ripping it apart with its bladed tail.

Overhead, a pair of ODIN drones were shifting into weapon deployment mode about eighty meters above the rooftop. Their disc-shaped hulls slid onto their sides and split open, revealing a quartet of laser cannons and a trio of missile pods. A sudden torrent of laser fire sliced across the rooftop into Flashlight positions, passing through their barriers and blasting into their bodies. Several alien drones fell in seconds.

The Flashlights didn't rout, but they clearly decided they could not hold the rooftop. Zakharov watched them begin a phased withdrawal, individual units falling back to the edge of the rooftops while others poured down covering fire. He saw a ruthless calculus of warfare play out, drone units holding position while others escaped the ODINs' killbox and the XCOM and FENRIR units closing in. The defenders held position, and though they were buried under plasma, laser, and alloy fire in seconds, they bought the majority of the survivors enough time to scramble to the edge of the rooftop and leap off into the streets below.

Then Zakharov witnessed a warning signal flashing across the local platoon network, and the ODINs abruptly closed back up, concealing their weapons and diving toward the rooftops.

A torrent of high-powered kinetic rounds cut through both of the drones and sliced them in half, sending chunks of rent metal careening into the streets below. The shots were backtraced instantly, and Zakharov shifted his feeds to cameras and sensors tracking the weapon that had swatted the ODINs out of the sky.

The Flashlight war machine towered on the rooftop it had claimed, standing three meters tall and wielding a weapon that was as large as a fully-kitted XCOM trooper. The enormous armored platform resembled its smaller kin, but bulkier and heavier in proportion, with a pair of large fin-like antennae rising from their shoulders. The moment it was done shooting, the massive Flashlight turned and plodded toward the edge of the roof, moving with a steady, efficient lope that reminded Zakharov of their own MECs, or maybe the Ethereals' heavy but agile war machines and powered armors.

"Fascinating," he murmured to himself. He _had_ to dissect one of those machines.

* * *

><p>Major Harper was not interested in dissecting the new Flashlights. He just wanted them <em>destroyed<em>. Multiple units had engaged his troops at the same time, and the new platforms had already cost him seven ODINs, as well as two more HULU recon units. Two of his squads had been close enough to the juggernauts when they opened fire that the hulking machines had turned their guns on the troops.

On his feeds, Harper watched a medic frantically working through the aftermath of a brush with the Flashlight juggernauts, vahlenite gloves slick with blood working on the back of a trooper's helmet to extract his cortical stack. The fact that the helmet was detached from the rest of the body - itself an unrecognizable mass of shredded Titan armor and viscera - made it a little bit easier to open the back panel, cut into the ragged skin over the brainstem, and pop out the grape-sized storage device.

That was one of the worst examples of what the guns did to his troopers. Most were in better shape, and had not suffered full body death. Olympian and fury presets came with secondary support organs and medichine implants standard that kept them alive in case of catastrophic injury, of which a lot of his troops had suffered. The drones were taking the bulk of casualties, but the Flashlights had killed or incapacitated nearly forty of his troops thus far.

_First encounters on the ground are always bloody._

_"Bring the Infernos in closer, but tell them to be ready for enemy AA,"_ Harper messaged the informorph coordinating their air support. They didn't know the range on the new platforms' heavy guns. _"And task the remaining FAFNIRs for immediate close-in support to replace the ODINs."_

He was hesitant to deploy the full firepower of an airstrike on the aliens until he was certain the target area was clear of humans. But the enemy juggernauts were powerful monsters that he was reluctant to pitt anything short of a GRENDEL or MEC against. Maybe a couple of heavies with blaster launchers.

He scowled, shaking his head, and issued orders to his heavy units to advance on the areas the juggernauts had emerged from. They had to crush this new problem quickly, and learn its secrets, strengths, and weaknesses. Some would argue he was reckless in this tactic, but he wanted this battle over as quickly as possible, and was willing to sacrifice men for decisive victory and enemy intelligence. The fact that almost all of those soldiers had backups stored on the Chevalier made him more willing to trade bodies for tactical and strategic advantage.

Officer training had often argued the merits of particular strategies in first hostile-encounter scenarios. Deployment of every possible - and practical - weapon against them to find out what worked and what didn't, versus a conservative approach to limit the enemy learning ones' capabilities. Harper favored the former, as he believed that destroying the enemy and learning what destroyed him most quickly was preferable. If the aliens were the aggressors, they likely already knew about human capabilities anyway.

Looking at the battle unfolding, at how they were fighting an enemy that was specifically adapted to fight human weapons and technology, he couldn't help but feel vindicated in that belief.

_"Major, got a high priority from 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Company,"_ one of Harper's aides messaged. "_Survivors."_

_"Patch it,"_ Harper ordered, shifting automatically to another channel as easily as breathing. "Go ahead."

_"Sir,"_ messaged Sergeant Anna Fornier - former EU, French military, now XCOM squad leader, according to the her ID tag and service record flashing past Harper's eyes the moment he connected to the squad. _"Got laser and some plasma fire coming from these coordinates but no military IFFs. Someone who's not XCOM or PPA is shooting up the Flashlights."_

The coordinates Fornier mentioned popped up, and with an eyeblink Harper referenced the location. It was a school set up in the second colonization wave. The platoon had already vectored a HULU to investigate, which was confirming plasma and laser fire coming out from the school's upper levels toward the surrounding buildings. Energy readings consistent with what they were seeing from the Flashlights were surrounding the structure.

Harper wasted no time opening a channel to the entire platoon and issuing new orders.

* * *

><p>Researcher Adam Glaser had never seen combat this close before. But then, he'd never volunteered to ride-along in someone's cortical implant into a combat zone, residing in a ghostrider module implanted in an XCOM squadleader. It was a refreshing experience to see things from the perspective of the troops on the ground.<p>

Of course, if he actually had either a urinary system or pants, he would have wet himself by now at the sheer amount of gunfire flowing back and forth like rivers of brightly-lit death. Sure, his mind was backed up on the Chevalier in case the module was destroyed in battle, but that didn't take away the instinctive terror when he realized those blue-tinged tracers whipping past the helmet his host wore could kill them both.

At the moment, they were charging through a door, the weight of a laser rifle barely registering on gene-modded musculature and power armor. Bullets where lancing past, tiny, almost grain-sized things, which could still annihilate unprotected flesh on impact. Through a cloud of chaff and the ricocheting remains of flechettes from grenades, he could see the enemy.

The laser rifle hummed and discharged, a scything red beam slicing into a humanoid form with a glowing eye, set into a snake's neck and head. The beam bore through the Flashlight's torso, armor glowing white-hot around the red spear before exploding, and the alien fell, the light fading from its eye and a wail of white noise heralded its death.

"Clear!" shouted Sergeant Fornier, her voice ringing through the module as she finished sweeping the room. Echoes of her word came from the other two XCOM troopers who had breached the room.

Two more dead Flashlights lay in the residential module, one speared by laser beams and the other pinned to a wall by a silver spike. That one was writhing on the alloy penetrator, trying to tear it free, until it stopped and went abruptly limp, blasting white noise and its lights fading.

_"Huh, I think that one just committed suicide,"_ Glaser remarked.

_"They all do, I guess,"_ Fornier messaged back, before speaking out loud. "All clear. Move to the next one."

Glaser drank in all the data he could from the squad tactical network. It was his purpose. He was riding along mostly to get an up-close perspective on the enemy for the researchers who would inevitably be trying to understand the enemy to better kill them. The soldiers could provide useful information, of course, but a set of eyes present, exclusively dedicated to observation of enemy behavior, was invaluable.

He'd volunteered for the job, sleeving into an infomorph body from his normal physical body for the mission, and uploaded into Fornier's ghostrider, which she's volunteered to carry, apparently because she was curious about having a second mind tagging along in her suit. Glaser tried to be a gracious and polite guest in his host's body, reserving his commentary for when killing/survival wasn't a priority.

He just hadn't expected it to be quite so pants-shittingly terrifying, especially when his fight-or-flight instincts - wonderfully preserved even in infolife state - were rendered impotent when he had no control over the body doing the fighting and none of the flying.

They descended a set of stairs and began the process of assault-and-clear once again. Glaser was rapidly becoming used to the experience, which only marginally reduced the terror of stacking up outside a room, hurling a grenade inside, and then charging right after it to make sure whatever was in the room was crushed beneath humanity's technologically-sophisticated boots.

Their squad, and the rest of their platoon, plus a pair of MECs and some ODINs that had joined them, were sweeping through the buildings adjacent to the school where the survivors were holed up, clearing the aliens out room by bloody room. Glaser counted more than twenty dead Flashlights by the time they had cleared this block, as well as some interesting observations.

_"They're using plasma weapons,"_ he mused as the squad advanced toward the rooftop.

_"Don't look like any plasma I've seen,"_ Fornier replied.

_"No, not like ours,"_ Glaser thought, looking more closely at some of the recordings pulled off the squad's tactical network. He concentrated on radiation markers. _"Well, I mean, kind of like ours. Our guns make plasma, and so do theirs. But they're doing it differently."_

_"How?"_ Fornier asked, her message curious. _"Actually, hold that."_ "Standby to breach!"

Glaser waited in silent, mostly-controlled terror as the squad burst onto the stack's rooftop and killed two more Flashlights. He dutifully recorded all the aliens' actions and behaviors as they shot at and were shot by XCOM.

"_Well, I'm not sure how familiar you are with the workings of our plasma weapons,"_ Glaser said.

_"I have to be able to break down, clean, and reassemble these things in my sleep,"_ Fornier replied.

_"Oh. Okay. So, you know our guns produce the plasma directly and shape it into a murderbeam with all that melty goodness,"_ Glaser explained. _"But their weapons don't. I think they use some kind of projectile that generates plasma on contact with a target."_

_"So that explains all those blue flashes when those shotgun analogues they carry hit something?"_ Fornier asked as they bounded toward the edge of the roof.

_"I think so,"_ Glaser said, nodding before he remembered he was literally nothing but data carried on a storage device jammed into his host's neck. _"I really want to look at their guns when we're not getting shot at."_

_"I can arrange that,_ mon ami," Fornier replied, before leaping off the top of the building.

Glaser knew that no matter how many times he would ghostride with XCOM soldiers, this was never going to be any less terrifying.

The XCOM squad hit the street all around Fornier with crunches of damaged pavement underneath Titan stompy-boots. None of them showed any discomfort as they bounded toward the school in a staggered formation, weapons sweeping in all directions. Glaser could hear more gunfire in buildings on the other side of the school, giving plenty of reason for the squad to be cautious.

Also, there were about a hundred Flashlight bodies lying in the streets surrounding the school. Glaser paid careful attention to them, and was very careful to take detailed scans on them, just as with every other Flashlight corpse they had encountered. Many were damaged in clear and obvious ways, but others simply lay in the streets or behind objects with no indicator as to what had killed them.

"XCOM!" Fornier shouted as they approached the school, her voice amplified by the Titan helmet's speaker. "XCOM! Coming in!"

_"You really need to yell that?"_ Glaser asked. _"I mean, who'd mistake us for Flashlights?"_

"I'd rather yell a bit than get my ass burnt off," Fornier replied out loud as they crossed the street and entered the damaged main entrance to one of the school blocks. Just inside, clearly visible on the helmet's scanners, was the thermal profile of a human man, baseline body-type, clutching a laser carbine while crouching behind a desk.

His mesh ID popped up the moment the Titan suit queried and received a reply: Wade, Harlan, research scientist and part-time science teacher at the local school.

"Oh, thank God, you're human," the young man breathed, standing up. He clutched the laser rifle in trembling hands, although the presence of a couple of destroyed Flashlights in the room indicated that he was at least somewhat competent.

"Damn straight," Fornier replied. "How many survivors do you have?"

"Uh," Wade started, shaking his head. "Um. Two hundred or so, last time I checked. Um, most are upstairs. The militia and the wounded."

"How many militia?" she asked, while sending messages to her team.

_"Tekembe, Alfonso, secure this room. Lawson, Mikhailovich, rooftop. Massani, with me when we go inside."_

"Thirty or so," Wade said. Glaser noted there was a far-off look in his eye, which he guessed was the thousand yard stare everyone talked about. "Mostly police or civilians. I can, ah, take you up there to meet them?"

"That would be a good idea," Fornier replied while her troops moved to positions, two of them taking up spots covering the door while two more jogged outside and then used grapplers and their leg muscles to launch themselves three stories up. Glaser decided then and there that he really wanted those muscle enhancements.

"Right," the shell-shocked young scientist said, and nodded. "This… this way, ma'am."

"Son, I earned these scars, don't ma'am me," she replied, but her tone was light as she followed Wade into the building.

* * *

><p>"Hm. I didn't think kinetic weapons could be so effective,"<p>

Zakharov - or at least, one of his many forks at the moment - reviewed reports of injuries sustained and catalogued by the troops' suits, and forwarded the interesting bits to the prime mind. Unsurprisingly, most of the wounds were easily survivable, even the ones involving massive internal damage. Not to mention that all the troops had backups made before the drop, just in case of the destruction or capture of their stacks, so there was little risk of permanent death even if the body was killed.

Thus, Zakharov focused on the data itself, and made a point to ignore the causes of that data, at least for the moment. He didn't need to be distracted by thinking about a medical report on a lung that had been shredded and was still desperately trying to draw in oxygen, or a soldier whose eyes and nose were torn apart by kinetic rounds hammering his helmet, or the last data stream of a man who was reduced to bloody slurry by a juggernaut's gun.

Instead, he focused on the extent of the damage they were seeing, and he was surprised at the effectiveness of alien weapons. The Flashlights had killed or critically injured more than a hundred XCOM troopers so far, and while that was only a temporary loss, the ineffectiveness of the Titan armor against their weapons was deeply worrying. A repetitive pattern emerged, of the enemy weapons penetrating Titan plating and then somehow fragmenting inside to slice apart the organs of the soldier. It was too soon for an autopsy, of course, but he was suspecting the aliens were using vahlenite ammunition designed to pierce vahlenite armor.

This was yet another piece of evidence that confirmed an even greater mystery: the aliens were prepared specifically to fight XCOM and humanity. Yet they had never encountered mankind before. In fact, mankind hadn't even been in this sector for more than a year, ever since the array was constructed at a small relay.

Zakharov withdrew from his observations, the simulspace equivalent of pushing back his chair and crossing his arms in deep thought. None of this made any sense. The aliens had seemed entirely focused on killing humans, with no other motivation. Well, except seizing cortical stacks. Beyond that, they had taken no obvious action of any kind to indicate their motives.

He sat for several minutes, contemplating everything that was happening, trying to put together the clues.

He was in that same position when three high-priority alerts popped up next to him, taking the form of hovering, glowing spheres. With a wave of a simulated hand, he accessed the first.

* * *

><p><em>"Major, I've got some news,"<em> messaged one of his company commanders. Harper looked away from the battlefield and brought up the commander in question, Captain Reynolds of C Company.

_"Go ahead,"_ Harper replied.

_"My boys who linked up with the survivors at that school got some interesting data,"_ Reynolds said. _"That school had a direct link to an observatory that was watching the entire Flashlight invasion, right up until it got blown to hell. You might want to look at this, sir."_

Data spilled across Harper's display. He recognized orbital tracks and signals, and a complex plotting or spacecraft movements. He also recognized the clear and obvious signatures of Flashlight frigates and cruisers. As well as several unknowns.

_"Captain, this can't be right,"_ Harper said. _"This data points to there being over a hundred Flashlight ships in orbit, with three of them being carrier-scale."_ He frowned, and checked the timestamp.

Three hours before Strike Seven Delta had arrived in-system. An armada that would have annihilated the entire squadron had been in the system.

Where the hell did those ships go?

A kernel of dread formed in his gut, and Harper opened a channel to Colonel Canales, while forwarding the data directly to Chevalier.

That was when all hell broke loose on the battlefield plot.

Red markers of Flashlight units suddenly appeared close to the XCOM units advancing on the spaceport, including seventeen of the markers indicating Flashlight juggernauts. They were charging across the rooftops and in the streets, weapons blazing. Casualty reports flashed across the display, almost too quickly to follow.

_"Flashlight counterattack!"_ he messaged. _"Air support! Chevalier! I need airstrikes at these coordinates now!"_

* * *

><p>Zakharov viewed the fleet data with intense curiosity. Yet another mystery.<p>

He counted one hundred and nine ships. The vessels that had been present during Operation: LIGHTNING KING were all accounted for, but there had been four times as many ships, along with three enormous craft matching the Chevalier in tonnage. That was enough firepower to destroy the entire fleet defending the wormhole array and sack every human colony in the sector.

The allied human fleet had struggled and bled so much to defeat a bare fraction of the Flashlight presence.

Where were the aliens now?

With a chill, Zakharov opened the second file.

* * *

><p>"Running analysis on intact Flashlight cognitive processors," Zakharov's fork said.<p>

He peered at the complex web of filaments and cables and tubes, light playing over them from scanners and microbots carefully mapping the web. He could hear the buzzing and murmurs of his fellow research staff as they discussed what they were seeing.

"In the meantime, I will begin examination of the specimen's limbs. This one has a remarkably intact upper left arm compared with previous specimens."

The saws began to whine again, and he delved into the artificial muscles of the alien drone.

"Doctor!" one of the informorphs abruptly said several minutes later as he was cutting into the Flashlight's upper arm. He looked up at the little drone controlled by one of his assistants, a squeaky female voice of Researcher Guzman. "I found something amazing!"

"What is it?" Zakharov asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well, okay, I didn't find it, it was Benito, and - will you get that thing out of my face!"

"He is flashing again? I told you to update your autocensors."

"Yeah, I just - there, updated, enjoy being a cube again, _ass_. Anyway, he was doing a fractal analysis of the Flashlight cognitive structure. Maybe seeing how it might have evolved over time from previous versions, assuming this is a self-evolving AI lifeform. Maybe we could predict underlying behavioral patterns. Nothing, you know, high priority or anything, no one expected this to actually be relevant right now, but-"

"Guzman, priorities." Honestly, she would be hyperventilating if she had lungs right now. Thankfully her body was asleep and drooling while her brain was working.

"Okay, okay, sorry." She paused for a moment. "Analysis of the Flashlight cognitive structure. We got a _match_, doctor."

Zakharov stared at her for a moment in silence.

"Show me."

* * *

><p>Zakharov - the primary one - was staring at all the myriad research data from the aliens, found himself staring at two separate pieces of technology, divided in timeframe by centuries and thousands of light-years' worth of distance. One recovered from a machine destroyed a few hours ago in a battle in the void over Hallis. The other, archived research data on a machine destroyed in the hangar bay of Ethereal Cargo Ship 018, shot down over Siberia in May 2018.<p>

While outwardly they were far removed, the most basic construction of the machinery, right down to the arrangement of individual superconducting circuits, was an exact match.

On the left, a Flashlight cognitive processor. On the right, a Sectopod cognitive processor.

His eyes turned toward the third alert, and he opened it.

* * *

><p>Rear Admiral Dolvich looked up at her holographic system display when a new signal appeared amidst a burst of Cherenkov radiation.<p>

_"FTL signal!"_ messaged one of the Chevalier's sensor officers. Admiral Dolvich turned toward the man, bringing up the feeds on her AR display, and stopped in mid-step.

_"Flashlight signature confirmed,"_ messaged the sensor officer, whose tone rapidly shifted from alarmed to puzzled. _"But its tiny… and there's only one ship."_

Indeed, there was only one contact, and it was only about the size of an alien frigate. It had dropped out of faster-than-light in orbit over Lincoln's north pole, but was remaining stationary.

"Targeting solution," Dolvich barked. "Prepare to engage."

_"Aye, ma'am, message out. All ships report ready to engage."_

On the hologram, the markers indicating allied warships were adjusting position, several burning toward the new contact. Indicators of wormhole readiness popped up, and the aircraft waiting in the carrier's launch tubes reported readiness.

_"Admiral,"_ the comms officer suddenly messaged. _"I think… they're transmitting something."_

"Start decryption," Dolvich ordered immediately. "See if you can figure out where its going."

_"Ma'am,"_ the comms officer said, shaking his head in confusion. _"Its in the clear, no encryption… and its using _our_ comms protocols. They're transmitting to _us_."_

* * *

><p>The Flashlights threw everything they had XCOM.<p>

Harper counted hundreds of infantry platforms, eighteen juggernauts, and something else: three meter tall, quadrupedal machines with legs thick with synthetic muscle and long, serpentine necks. Recessed cannons built into their glowing head sections fired rivers of kinetic rounds into the shocked XCOM troops.

The abrupt tide of synthetic platforms and blazing kinetic weapons tore into the XCOM squads who had been advancing into the enemy positions moments before, and two entire squads were wiped out in seconds, their bodies torn apart by heavy Flashlight guns. The squads in question returned fire, dropping half a dozen of the platforms in bursts of red and green light, but it was a bucket against a flood.

Harper's orders flew out like machinegun bullets, repositioning a hundred and more XCOM troops while calling down multiple airstrikes against the oncoming horde. Despite the deadly concentration of enemy force, it was also a massed foe who were ideal targets for bombardment.

If only the human troops could hold them in place long enough.

The XCOM troops shifted from offense to defense with a smooth efficiency borne of training and well-oiled communications practice, their line bulging backward as the Flashlights charged. XCOM formed a defensive line around four blocks of module stacks, surges of laser beams, plasma bolts, and kinetic rounds raging back and forth. Sheer volume of fire - walls of blue-tinged bullets intense enough to tear through walls and cover from sheer mass and kinetic energy - were driving the XCOM defenders back.

Harper watched one group of soldiers on a rooftop driven back, a third of their number cut down and left dead or down and running on secondary organs. In the gap their presence formed, a pair of juggernauts charged forward and leapt clear across the street, easily clearing twenty-five meters between the two rooftops. They landed with heavy impacts, raising their weapons to slice upon a hole in the defensive line.

A pair MECs met them.

The titanic, three-meter tall mass of metal and man, straddling the line between powered armor, walking tank, and cybernetic augments, leapt toward the alien machines from another rooftop, and charged toward them with ground-shaking stomps. One of MECs raised a long, boxy particle cannon and fired, a blue-white column of annihilation intercepting the juggernaut before it could bring its own mass accelerator to bear. The beam tore the Juggernaut's upper torso apart, blasting a gaping circular hole in its head and chest. The hulk of Flashlight machinery fell in a massive crash of rent machinery.

The second juggernaut was much closer to the MECs, and caught a screaming, rocket-boosted fist directly in the center of the chest, courtesy of the second MEC trooper's kinetic strike module. The impact of a solid vahlenite mass in the middle of its body crumpled the outer plating, smashed internal components, and launched the Flashlight into the air to tumble into the streets below.

Return fire swept toward the two MECs who had exposed themselves to destroy the juggernauts. More than twenty weapons converged on the pair of looming soldiers, who fell back, bullets slicing past and bouncing off their massive plating. Shots penetrated their armor, sending blood flying and internal fluids spraying, but they were MECs; small arms would need to work hard to kill them.

Purple light, swirling and fluid, washed over the MECs, and the bullets hammering them went flying in multiple directions, deflecting off the twisting barricade of psionic energy. The trooper responsible stood in the epicenter of a hurricane of psychic power violet-white light blazing around the soldier's head. XCOM soldiers rallied around the defensive barrier, firing from beneath its comforting protection.

Below, in the streets and alleys, fighting was even more savage and intense. Harper witnessed one of the Flashlight quadruped machines stomping through a street along the line, ignoring the plasma and laser fire that rained upon it and returning fire with deadly precision. Its guns pounded the rooftops and facings of the buildings, driving back the XCOM troops trying to hold those positions. Weapons fire that was superheating the armor of smaller Flashlight platforms was barely registering on the prowling, long-necked weapon's plating.

A pair of glowing green orbs abruptly rocketed out of the building, diving toward the alien machine. The blaster bombs weaved unerringly toward the war machine and slammed into its shields, bathing the street in raw destructive heat and force. Concrete glowed and melted, air expanded outward in a roar of violence, and the Flashlight machine stomped out of the detonation with shaky legs, heat radiating off of the armor.

Its cast its head back toward the building it was firing at and launched another barrage at the humans within. Under the cover of its guns, other Flashlights charged into the open toward the building.

They abruptly halted and scattered when the first GRENDEL arrived.

If the FENRIR drones were built around wolves or hunting cats, then the GRENDEL UHIV was an enormous, armor-plated bear. It was a towering four meters tall, with a bulky upper body covered in layered vahlenite plating, its legs massive constructions of synthetic muscle. It lumbered forward with that unnaturally fluid agility; something so big just didn't move that easily, crunching over urban ruin and weaving between buildings with glowing weapons systems locking onto targets.

Where the bear's head would have been was a gimbal mount, carrying twinned laser cannons and a heavy plasma weapon, both shining bright enough to light the entire street. On its back was a heavy turret mounting a long, boxy particle cannon that matched the GRENDEL's eight meter length, extending a couple of meters past its forward guns. There was no crew; instead the GRENDEL was piloted by a pair of infomorphs who managed the bulky walker.

The Flashlight war machine turned toward the GRENDEL and opened fire with its kinetic weapons, and there was a streak of light that erupted from the thing's head, a bolt of blue-white plasma that crashed into the GRENDEL's forward armor that sent out a crackling detonation, shorting out most of the feeds from the UHIV and scrambling its targeting. The Flashlight advanced, kinetic weapons hammering the stumbling UHIV's armor for several long seconds.

Then, with an almost biological shiver, the GRENDEL set its feet, its weapons swiveling to face the Flashlight right as its data feeds restored. Energy surged through laser, plasma, and particle weapons.

Green, red, and blue-white destruction exploded into the Flashlight. A burst of brilliant illumination washed over the street, and a moment later the synthetic's head section was crashing to the street, separated from a body that was blown in half.

The GRENDEL advanced, crushing the remains of the Flashlight walker and firing into the other aliens that had been behind the war machine.

_"Hades Actual, airstrikes inbound,"_ reported the battalion coordinator infomorph. _"Orbital guns are ready to fire. Targets?"_

"Everything," Harper said, looking away from the battle. He quickly highlighted the entire area the Flashlights were currently contained in, at least for the moment. "Level this area. Plasma, kinetics, lasers. Wipe it clean."

_"There are dead and incapacitated personnel in the strike zone, sir,"_ the infomorph said. _"We might not be able to recover their stacks or bodies if we do this."_

"They're backed up," Harper said, his voice cold enough to surprise even him. "Burn it all."

_"Roger that, sir,"_ the infomorph replied. "_Targeting sent. Weapons firing."_

* * *

><p>Zakharov stared at the evidence, and shook his head in disbelief. It should have been obvious.<p>

Enemy force composition. Unprovoked attack on humanity. Familiar technology and construction. Seizing cortical stacks, as if they were trying to understand humans. Three-fourths of their fleet abandoning the system shortly after the ground attack had occurred. Multiple instances of shut-down Flashlight platforms, as though they had deactivated themselves. The fact that they were geared specifically to fight humanity. An irrational, suicidal final attack.

And a basic structural match between Sectopod and Flashlight processors, indicating a common point of origin.

He opened a priority channel to the Admiral, thankful that at the moment, he had no biological hands that would tremble.

* * *

><p>"This makes no sense, Major," Colonel Canales said as he, Major Magarabi, and Major Harper looked over the destruction from their respective command posts, viewing hundreds of feeds from soldiers, drones, and mechs.<p>

Four module stacks were now a heap of twisted, ruined metal left molten and vaporized. Inferno fighters were overing among the smoking ruins, plasma weapons aimed at the bones of the buildings that had been leveled by massed plasma, laser, and kinetic fire. Plodding through the remains were looming quadruped shapes, war machines of vahlenite metal with glowing plasma weapons and laser batteries. The GRENDELs seemed almost sullen that they had arrived to stem the Flashlight assault only for it to be wiped out in one savagely intense barrage from the sky.

"The Flashlights just charged," Harper replied, shrugging. "The entire force. All of them. Nearly every unit remaining in the city in this one area."

"Why?" Magrabi asked, arms crossed and scowling. "Its like… Like they wanted to die in a blaze of glory. They launched a banzai charge straight into our guns."

"Suicide by XCOM," Harper murmured.

But it was done. Lincoln was cleansed, the city of Mariana liberated at the cost of over four hundred XCOM bodies.

* * *

><p>Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich stared at Doctor Zakharov's avatar, and nodded slowly in understanding as he outlined his findings, gathered from data from combat on the ground and studies on the remains of the aliens.<p>

"I see," she messaged. "The Flashlights are Sectopods. This is… disturbing."

"No, Admiral," Zakharov shook his head. "The Sectopods and Flashlights are divergent. They have a shared origin, though I do not know which was first. The higher-level construction of the two… species are divergent enough that they would be virtually unrecognizable unless you looked at the underlying construction of the artificial neural pathways."

"You're sure this isn't convergent evolution?" she asked. "Two separate artificial lifeforms developing similar basic computational structures to achieve the same goals?"

"Highly unlikely," Zakharov replied. "While I would expect convergent evolution in terms of creating similar structures to achieve ends - a leg is a leg is a leg, after all - we would see significant difference in the basic building blocks of the structure, whether technological or biological. Just look at the different protocols and pathways in SDC and PPA computers, for example. We can't even agree on how to build our computers, and we're the same species. But the Flashlights and the Sectopods… their basic coding and structures all match. This despite being a quarter of a galaxy apart. They diverged from the same… ancestor, as it were."

"Which means that at some point, the Flashlights had contact with the Ethereals," Dolvich replied with a frown. "How certain are you of this larger theory about their motivations?"

"It fits the current evidence," Zakharov replied. "The attack was completely unprovoked, from our perspective. But imagine this scenario: at the edge of our territory, we suddenly come across vessels using vahlenite hulls. They use distinctive energy signatures associated with elerium and psionics. They maintain hyperwave communications, transition through wormholes, and use extensive cybernetic and genetic augmentation. How would we react? What would our leadership assume?"

"We would think they were Ethereals," Dolvich murmured. "Or servants of them." She shook her head. "It explains why it feels like we're facing a foe that seems geared specifically to fight us. But that doesn't explain why they launched an unprovoked attack. I would have performed reconnaissance, observed the enemy carefully before attacking, if only to confirm the the threat."

"Yes, you would," Zakharov said. "You are a rational human being. But I think we both know that humans as a whole are not rational as a species. Furthermore."

With a wave of his hand he showed her an image of multiple blocks of destroyed module stacks in Mariana. Another wave showed the image of over a hundred orbital contacts over the planet thanks to a surface observatory, and then a third gesture showed only a couple of dozen several hours later, from the human fleet's own recon. A fourth gesture brought up another image.

A human body, with its cortical stack cut out.

"They thought we were the Ethereals," Zakharov whispered. "And when they realized we weren't…."

"You're suggesting…" Dolvich said, and then nodded before Zakharov could reply. "Multiple factions, one of whom attacked without provocation. The Flashlights abandoned the group we have been fighting to die here, and they went out in a blaze of glory."

"That is the theory, at least," Zakharov admitted. "Remarkably human, for an alien AI. I would doubt it if I weren't watching them behave in this precise manner."

Dolvich turned toward the holographic display showing the system. Every surviving ship in the human fleets were accounted for.

Which made the single small ship orbiting over Lincoln's north pole an obvious outsider. The fact that it was giving off Flashlight energy signatures made its identity clear.

And Zakharov's theory cast a new light on the message it was transmitting in the clear, in every human language, with words spoken in cold, synthesized tones.

"We wish to discuss a cessation of hostilities."

"Prepare an envoy," Dolvich commanded. "I want answers."

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> _I was having a lot of trouble writing this chapter up until I decided to take a step back, narratatively, and have most of the action witnessed through civilians and commanders instead of the soldiers on the ground. The viewpoint shift made this chapter more effective. When we, eventually, get to Shepard and the merry band of rogues and gunmen that surround him/her, we'll see a lot more on-the-ground action.

The geth armature seen in this chapter is significantly more mobile than the canonical one. That's deliberate. The armatures in-game were defensively oriented, while this one is more offensively designed.

Next chapter... oooh, that's going to be fun. Heh.


	5. Chapter Four: CASE EAGLE DAWN Part One

_**Author's Note:** _When you see the phrase "Past tense?" you might want to put on _Tears of Kharan/Adagio for Strings_ from the Homeworld soundtrack. Just saying.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Chapter Four: CASE EAGLE DAWN<strong>_

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File AA36490-1021-CND<strong>

**Flagged: High Priority**

**Excerpt: Closed Council Session re: AA-3391 R-991 incident**

_Note: Only partial acquisition due to improved Council screening. See File AA364922-1022-CND for additional file fragments._

**Tevos:** -are certain?

**Dimal:** There is little room for interpretation. Most of the weapons systems used in the engagement were familiar to us, but there were definitely plasma weapons utilized, albeit limited only to the new species.

**Graccius:** These radiation markers from their faster-than-light systems do not match known drive emissions.

**Dimal:** The most intriguing part, I agree. The emissions appear for between one to three seconds before the ships emerge, indicating either their drive systems projects radiation ahead of arrival, or that there is some theoretical wormhole opening between points.

**Tevos:** _(surprised)_ Wormholes?

**Dimal:** These are only conjectures based on limited data at the moment. I have mobilized STG theoretical scientists to investigate. I expect a preliminary report by the end of the day.

**Graccius:** They have yet to locate your probes?

**Dimal:** Unknown. There remains a… strong possibility that they have detected them, as the probes have been in-system long enough for their transition emissions to be detected. But the probes are continuing transmissions as we speak. If they have been discovered, the aliens are content to ignore them.

**Tevos: **What else can you tell us?

**Dimal:** Geth have been completely eradicated from the system during the second engagement. We have limited data from the surface engagement, as our probes had to remain well outside effective scanning range of the planetary surface. The new species is apparently quite curious about the geth, as they were aggressively salvaging the remains of the geth ships. STG analysts believe this may be a botched first contact scenario.

**Tevos:** In that case we need to make contact quickly. A war between a new species and the geth… (video reference shows Tevos pressing a hand to her forehead; minute movements of crest indicating distress and possible head pain) This could very easily spill over into the Terminus.

_(pause for two seconds)_

**Tevos:** Dimal, do you know who has interests in that particular sector?

**Dimal:** Several Terminus warbands and pirate groups have been sighted, but the sector itself is largely ignored despite proximity to several minor powers, mostly due to proximity to the Veil and the geth. A mercenary group associated with Aria T'Loak, the Golden Varrens, operate a mining operation in the Belvasar system. The Cabal have secured and claimed two systems near Relay-0980 but have not expanded beyond. Several independent interests have been exploring for resources, but they have not expanded far beyond local relays. Almost all of the parties active are armed and aggressive.

**Tevos:** I suppose a hostile first contact was nearly inevitable in that sector, then. Do we know the extent of the alien colonization?

**Dimal:** We assume that Relay-0991 is their origin point in the sector, as it is the closest relay to the engagement site. There are several hundred stars within easy reach, assuming they use standard mass effect drive cores. We are probing those systems, but most of them appear uninhabited and uninhabitable save for resource extraction. No further signs of colonization have been detected.

**Tevos:** Can we get a contact team into the sector?

**Graccius:** Easily. Several Citadel sectors connect to relays in that sector, including a number of Hierarchy military installations watching the Terminus border.

**Tevos:** Excellent. I will dispatch a team immediately before the situation becomes even worse.

**Graccius:** I'll advise Palaven and arrange an escort, as well as a response force in case the situation deteriorates further.

**Tevos:** I doubt they will be needed, but we must prepare for-

_(Council members moved past immediate recording range at this point. See File AA364922-1022-CND)_

**_End Transcript_**

* * *

><p>Elena Dolvich leaned forward, watching the system display hovering over her bridge. The hologlobe depicted the Voidranger carrying the human envoy in its orbit toward the Flashlight ship that was holding position over Lincoln's north pole.<p>

"All gunnery stations confirm target locks on vectors that will not intercept the envoy," reported her tactical officer. "We can hit that ship in seconds if needed."

"Excellent," Dolvich replied, but kept her trepidation hidden. They had precious few options to quickly kill a Flashlight ship without dumping overwhelming firepower into it. Kinetic weapons and lasers were their only effective options against the damn things' shields. Plasma was ineffective, and lances would be easily shot down by their point defense - part of the reason why they weren't the primary weapon on human ships even before they'd encountered the aliens.

If the envoy boarded, the enemy could jump out in seconds with them onboard. Of course, that was why all the envoys were backed up and outfitted with emergency farcasters. If things went badly, they would cast out - and if the worst-case happened and they were at FTL speeds before the envoys could cast out… well, there was a reason they were all outfitted with detonators.

She leaned back, forcing herself to relax, and watched history in the making, as impossible as it seemed to her. Depending on what happened next, either there would be peace or bitter, brutal war.

* * *

><p>The tension in the Voidranger orbiting toward the alien craft was almost tactile, even through the armor everyone wore. The squad of XCOM soldiers positioned at the docking port at the rear of the dropship sat loose and ready, doing their best to cover up their tension. The soldiers were led by a Sergeant Moskovitz, a hulking trooper in an olympian morph, heavy armor, and carrying a heavy plasma weapon. The rest of the squad was the standard XCOM fireteam, rounded out by a woman in a form-fitting black suit with armored plates covering her vitals, purple lights running down the spine of the suit indicating its psionic amplifiers.<p>

The actual envoys were seated behind Moskovitz's skull-cracker security team, all clad in lighter armor. None of them wore any weapons; it was judged too risky and inappropriate for diplomatic personnel to go about armed.

Lieutenant Kathryn Chambers was far more visibly anxious, not the least because of the tension that everyone else was feeling. Empathic sensory capacity was not the benefit everyone thought it was, and while it was very useful for a departmental liaison like herself, it was less useful when prepping for a dangerous mission. There was a reason why psionics with empath capability were often screened out of combat roles; dealing with one;s own emotions in battle was difficult enough, let alone those of everyone around oneself.

But it made her an excellent diplomat and mediator, and empaths were the crucial lubricant that kept the XCOM machine running, considering the constant internal headbutting between XCOM's divisions. And like all internal liaisons, Lieutenant Chambers had diplomatic training, both to deal with other human factions that XCOM rubbed up against, and in the off chance that an XCOM fleet encountered alien life that could be negotiated with - a CASE EAGLE DAWN scenario.

Captain Elias Kronin sat across from Lieutenant Chambers, comparatively at ease. Unlike the towering, genetically-enhanced soldiers at the docking port, Kronin was shorter, barely reaching the same height as Chambers, and he was broad and beneath the armor a little overweight. His bearing and manner were completely nonthreatening, his features bland and unremarkable, and overall he gave the impression of a typical bureaucrat.

The fact that Kronin was XCOM Intelligence and assigned to such a crucial mission by the Rear Admiral herself put a lie that bookish desk jockey image. Then again, maybe he was just an analyst; he himself had said that his skills were being brought along to help them keep ahead of whatever the Flashlights might have planned at the negotiations. The fact that Kronin was under orders to defer to Chambers despite their rank difference was also telling.

The last member of the envoy was Doctor Zakharov. Or rather, a beta fork of Zakharov, riding in one of the backup bodies that the Research division kept around for dangerous lab work, this one a tanned, straightforward cloned body with the standard genetic optimization package. Being a beta fork, he possessed most of the cognitive capacity of his progenitor, but not all of it, and his actual knowledge base was carefully pruned by psychosurgery to remove sensitive data beyond what they had learned regarding the Flashlights.

Lieutenant Chambers didn't like being around beta forks. It might have been a combination of her empathic abilities, which made the fork seem like a dull echo of the original, and the knowledge that she was dealing with a hobbled copy of someone's mind. She was often left wondering how the fork itself felt about the whole situation, though she had to remind herself that forks generally held the same beliefs and motivations as their originals, at least immediately after splitting off.

Kronin and Zakharov's fork had been discussing what they knew about the Flashlights and bandying theories back and forth when Chambers focused her attention on them again.

"-can we even be certain that it is a networked AI lifeform?" Kronin asked, raising his eyebrows. "Your own theory posits multiple factions to explain the irrationality of their actions on the ground."

"I agree to the possibility," Zakharov replied. "One alternate theory is that we're not dealing with a networked AI but some kind of remotely-operated lifeform, with the Flashlights being some form of drone or remote-presence system."

"Remotely-controlled machines would be difficult, from a logistics standpoint," Kronin mused. "Maybe their controllers could have just released them in our direction? Deployed a Von Neumann-like AI entity to prosecute a war?"

"The truth is," Chamber cut in, "We won't know what we're dealing with until we get aboard that ship and start talking with them." Both men nodded. "I'm trying to consider what an AI or something controlling an AI on this scale would want from us that we could negotiate for." She frowned, thinking back to the courses she had taken on theoretical alien negotiations. First objective was to attempt to determine motivations and from there what the alien party could desire.

"They can't be demanding space," she said, partly to herself. "The environmental tolerances on those platforms are very impressive." Zakharov nodded.

"If the Flashlights chose to colonize," he said, "they could easily claim countless worlds uninhabitable by organic life."

"Unless they're fighting for an organic controller," Kronin pointed out.

"No, I don't think this attack is motivated by resources or territory," Chambers said. "None of our probes in the sector have found any indication of Flashlight colonization. This was a reaction to us. They stumbled across and attacked us, and Zakharov's theory about their contact with the Ethereals holds the most weight, especially because we're virtually indistinguishable from the Ethereals."

"One minute," Moskovitz called, and the envoys went silent. Chambers felt her heart start pounding more furiously, and the anxiety around her rose. Kronin kept it under control as well as Moskovitz's skull-crackers, and Zakharov tempered his fears with the anticipation of learning and discovery.

She switched to the pilot's data feed.

"Flashlight ship just sent us a message," the pilot reported as she connected. On the ship's data plot, she could see the thermal readings from the alien craft: the same wingless wasp shape as other frigates, though significantly smaller, maybe sixty meters in length. "They gave us a docking location."

"In our language?" Chambers messaged, and the pilot sent a wordless affirmative.

That was one of the other things that made her both intrigued and anxious. The Flashlights learned so fast. In less than a day, they had managed to not only learn human languages but had attained enough familiarity with human technology to launch electronic warfare attacks on their systems. She could be negotiating at a terrible disadvantage.

"Coming around to dock," the pilot reported. "Adjusting course." Thrusters fired, the Voidranger shaking quietly, and a shifting in her center of gravity told her the craft was rotating.

"Docking in five." A moment passed. "Three. Two. One."

A slight tremor rolled through the assembled soldiers and diplomats.

"Docking in progress. Standby. Starting atmospheric seal. Standby."

A hissing sound came from the docking port, where six different types of weapons glowing with deadly violence were leveled and ready to deploy hell.

"Sealed. Sampling atmosphere." A pause again. "Ideal nitrogen-oxygen mix. No known toxins. Cleared to open."

"Here we go," Lieutenant Chambers whispered as she rose to her feet.

* * *

><p>The first thing through the door was not human, but rather a microbot recon swarm that flitted down the docking tube and into the room beyond, scanning and providing a map of the next compartment to Moskovitz's squad. They advanced down the tube, weapons shouldered. Chambers considered ordering them to stand down, but she couldn't disagree with their militant caution. The Flashlights would just have to understand their caution.<p>

The troops reached the door at the end of the tube and advanced through into a large circular chamber about fifteen meters long and wide, with a dome-like ceiling. Everything was built out of the familiar dark blue-gray metal the Flashlights favored, with the wall panels made of the same metallic, vaguely organic curves of other Flashlight designs. A white globe set into the ceiling lit the room, supplemented by a white band around the room's perimeter along the floor.

In the center of the room was a wide, rectangular table, with a pair of metal-and-plastic chairs positioned on one side. A storage crate - or what the teams combing through the alien bases on the ground had concluded was the Flashlight equivalent of a storage box - sat at one side of the table, about a meter in length and half that tall and wide.

On the opposite side of the table from the entrance stood a single Flashlight drone.

"Don't move," Moskovitz said, not quite barking the order toward the machine. "Any movement and we will shoot you."

"Acknowledged."

The voice of the Flashlight was toneless and mechanical. Hearing it sent a tiny chill down Chambers' spine, and she could feel similar reactions from the rest of the team, even the soldiers.

It stood stock still as the XCOM soldiers advanced into the room, its stillness almost mocking Moskovitz's command. It matched other Flashlight Type Two platforms, save for a single thick pylon rising out of its back. The glowing eye followed the XCOM troopers as they swept the room, two of them keeping weapons not-quite trained on the platform while the fireteam's psychic stood by the entrance, purple light glowing around her head in preparation to react to any trap. The other three soldiers swept the room, scanners roving over the walls and floors for any surprises.

After about a minute of sweeping the room, Moskovitz held up a fist and nodded.

"All clear," he reported, his tone vaguely disappointed. He and his team moved back to the entrance to the compartment, and he turned back toward the drone. "Alright, ma'am. You're cleared to enter." He nodded toward the drone. "Any threatening action toward our diplomats will be met with lethal force."

"Acknowledged," the Flashlight repeated.

Chambers stepped through the docking tube into the room with the single alien, and met… well, not eyes, but "ocular sensors" was kind of weird and long. She approached the alien machine, wondering at what they considered proper protocol - if they had any. "Protocol" to them might not extend beyond proper mesh communication software.

"Greetings. I am Lieutenant Kathryn Chambers, representative of the human Extraterrestrial Combat Unit and all other human powers."

"We acknowledge your authority," the drone replied. "We represent the Geth Consensus."

Geth? That was… oddly mundane for some kind of terrifying AI war machine. But regardless, the meeting was going good so far. They at least had a name for the alien species. Or government, or faction, or whatever they had.

"May I ask what your name is?" she asked.

"We are geth."

Curious. A shared identity? Then again, they were AI; would they even have a self-concept comparable to individuality?

"Does the individual in front of me have a name?" she asked, and immediately felt stupid. Peace negotiations shouldn't sound like one was talking to a child.

"There is no individual. There are one thousand, nine hundred and forty-seven geth runtimes operating on this platform."

"Software," Zakharov mused. "A software-based lifeform, like an infomorph, but purely synthetic?"

"Correct," the drone said.

"Yet there's thousands of them housed in one body," Zakharov added.

"Correct," the geth repeated. Chambers nodded, even as she tried to process that. The fact that she was discussing peace with two thousand entities at once. She was effectively conversing with the entire infolife population of a moderate-sized habitat, compressed down into a single human-sized drone.

And if they were anything like human infomorphs, then maybe they could find common ground.

"May we sit?" Chambers asked, as she continued adjusting for the curveballs already being thrown in the first few moments of the meeting.

"Yes."

She sat down in the chair, and immediately realized that the ergonomics were... off. Wider around the posterior and upper body, like it had been designed for a human-like form, but definitely not a human. Something broader in the shoulders and hips. Zakharov joined her, while Kronin stood to one side, remaining silent and still pretending to be the desk jockey bureaucrat. On the other side of the table, the geth ambassador did the same in a chair of its own. Entirely unnecessary, but it seemed to be trying to match its counterparts.

"You have stated that you wish a cessation of hostilities," Chambers said as she tried to adjust.

"Yes."

"Before we can begin negotiating that, we must understand," she continued. "Why did you attack us?"

A couple of seconds passed, the platform remaining very still, although its eye moved back and forth between everyone present.

"Long-range reconnaissance probing detected your colonies. Subsequent observation occurred following standard protocols for intelligent organic life. Spectrographic analysis reported vahlenite construction. Energy signatures consistent with elerium and psionic power sources. Plasma weaponry was detected. Wormhole transition was detected. Hyperwave transmissions and scanning were detected."

Chambers felt her heart sink as the geth confirmed what they had all been suspecting.

"Initial analysis concluded that your species were Reapers. Geth favoring immediate hostility reacted."

"Reapers?" she asked, confused.

"Your species identifies them as Ethereals," the geth continued. "Our creators identified them as Reapers."

"Your creators?" she asked, and could feel a spike of intense curiosity from both men flanking her.

A moment passed, and light twisted over the table, shaping into humanoid forms. The holographic projector rapidly gained resolution and coherence, and abruptly, they found themselves looking at… humans.

No, she realized just as Zakharov leaned forward and shook his head. Not humans. The creatures standing in the holographic projection looked very similar to humans, with the same body shape and number of limbs, but there were obvious differences. The projections wore a simple form-fitting gray jumpsuit which did little to hide their forms. There was an obvious male and female, the former standing with broad shoulders, and the latter with unusually wide hips. Their hands and feet ended with three digits, almost avian in structure, while their eyes were solid silver-white orbs with faintly visible differentiations in color indicating pupils. Dark lines ran down their faces, but with the exception of the eyes and markings, their faces were surprisingly similar to humans.

Chambers wasn't sure what she'd really been expecting. Many of the Ethereals' own minions had been disturbingly humanlike in body structure: Sectoids had been shaped in a roughly humanoid fashion, while Mutons were towering but humanoid brutes. Thin Men had looked almost exactly like humans, although they had clearly suffered extensive alteration from their original forms. Many of them had human facial structures as well, so it wasn't that strange to come across something this close to the human form.

And, if one looked at the geth body structure, it was a very close match to the male version of their creators. Like looking at a human-proportioned synthmorph.

"What are your creators called?" Zakharov asked while Chambers considered what they were looking at.

"The Creators named themselves 'quarians'," replied the geth.

"Named?" Kronin abruptly asked from his standing position beside the table. "Past tense?"

"Correct."

That single word sent a terrible burst of dread, fear, and horror through the room, even among the soldiers at the entrance.

The simple fact was that, during the Ethereal War, the invaders had held back their full capabilities. If they had chosen to do so, the Ethereals could have utterly crushed humanity, and the fact that the aliens hadn't done so had been a deep, underlying fear among the human species. It wasn't until Operation Avenger, where Durand had communicated with the Ethereal leader, that XCOM had learned that humanity was being tested by the aliens for some unknown purpose.

Unfortunately for them, the Ethereals learned that mankind had far exceeded their expectations. But the fact remained that until those final moments of Operation Avenger, the aliens had possessed the capacity to completely crush humanity. And if the geth were telling the truth...

"How did it happen?" Zakharov asked.

"According to your calendar, contact with Ethereal forces occurred on May 21, 1886 AD."

The hologram reappeared, showing a local stellar plot of the galactic arm. A collection of about sixty stars were highlighted in blue, with translated names appearing over them. Near the center of the display was a star marked Tikkun, with an attached tag of "homeworld."

"Outer Creator colonies ceased reporting. Extranet communications cut. Creator military response deployed within twelve hours. Prevailing theory of large-scale coordinated pirate attack."

"But it was the Ethereals," Chambers said, more to say something than anything else.

"Correct."

On the display, images appeared of what were clearly vessels: long and narrow, cylindrical bodies with large rotating spheres or wheels in their bows. Chambers counted a dozen ships of varying sizes, and her AR displays automatically attached rough size and tonnage estimates, indicating some were frigates and cruisers. The vessels were shown rapidly advancing out of orbit over an Earth-like colony world and abruptly flashing out of sight in bursts of blue-shifted light, the hallmark of mass effect faster-than-light drives.

The map changed, marking over thirty of the stars as orange.

"Six hours after response launched. Incoherent transmissions from surviving Creator fleet elements. Unknown enemy assaulting outer colonies. Casualty reports indicate near-total destruction. Full-scale military mobilization ordered. External communications remain severed. Courier ships attempt to exit Creator space to call for aid. All are presumed intercepted and destroyed."

Another display appeared, this one showing hundreds of starships over multiple planets. Some were clearly being mobilized from the orbital equivalent of boneyards, while others were clearly undergoing emergency repairs and refitting. The mass of metal and machinery being activated and deployed was impressive, but the frantic speed and determination of the workers crawling over the ships made it clear that the quarians were terrified.

The sensor feeds and records ended with many of the ships forming up into combat formations and jumping out again. A few moments later, new sensor records showed those same ships returning - only it was less than a tenth of them, and most of those bore twisted superstructures indicating metal melted by plasma fire, gaping holes in their hulls, and entire sections missing from the warships.

The map shifted again. Twenty-seven stars - the majority of the remainder - were marked orange.

"Forty-one hours after initial loss of communications. Communication with inner colonies ceases. Major naval encounters occur within blackout sectors. Surviving fleet elements retreat, report overwhelming enemy force invading colony worlds, with widespread destruction and combat occurring on the surfaces of Creator planets. Attempts to call for assistance unanswered; all extranet communications outside Creator territory are confirmed disabled."

Chambers nodded, numb at the scale of the destruction and death that the geth ambassador was dispassionately reporting. It wasn't until she caught some surface thoughts from Kronin that she even realized that the geth had indicated a larger galactic society beyond the quarians' corner of space. But what she was witnessing was drawing her in too closely right now to ask questions beyond that.

"Seventy-six hours after loss of contact with outer colonies."

All of the quarian stars were marked orange.

"Core colony communications lost. Presumed overrun. Eighty-one hours after initial loss of communications, home system of Tikkun is attacked."

The next images were a confusing blur of hundreds of sensor tracks, indicating an enormous fleet battle. Chambers counted hundreds of quarian warships and ten times that in fighter craft, waging a constant battle across an entire star system, ferociously battling in the skies over another Earth-like world. Sheets of kinetic weapons fire raged out into the darkness in tremendous volleys.

Against them, Chambers counted twenty massive contacts with unmistakable emission profiles: Temple Ships.

"Christ," she heard Kronin whisper. She found herself agreeing; just one of those had threatened all of Earth.

Surrounding the Temple Ships were hundreds of Ethereal battleships and thousands of smaller vessels matching the familiar abductors and scouts, acting like rough frigate and fighter analogues. Blinding columns of plasma surged across space, so brilliant that they washed out thermal sensor feeds as they raged and crashed against quarian shields. Like the geth's own shields against human plasma, the superheated, ionized gas simply halted against the kinetic barriers of the quarians, unable to breach shields made to defend against much more concentrated force.

But the heat from the weapons radiated outward, and Chambers witnessed quarian hulls warping under the terrible thermal energy caused by the sheer amount of plasma hammering them. Ethereal scouts swept over other quarian ships, raining more plasma into the defending ships and ignoring return fire from enemy laserpoint defense, even when it blew the vessels apart.

Energy spikes consistent with massive pulses of psionic power erupted from the Temple Ships as their lesser ships did battle, and Chambers saw the signatures of wormholes opening - only these opened in the middle of quarian warships. The stricken vessels abruptly flew apart, split down the middle, their superstructures breaking apart at deadly orbital velocities. Beams of ugly, twisting purple light, like thousands of electrical arcs weaving together into a single coherent column of psionic power, cut across the great distances between the battling fleets and grasped quarian ships. As the crackling psionic force washed over the vessels, they abruptly turned, swiveling their guns toward other ships, and opened fire.

"Remaining Creator naval assets destroyed in battle over homeworld Rannoch," the geth said into the silence that followed. "Surface invasion of Rannoch commences."

The burning remains of ships filled the orbit over Rannoch, radiating white-hot. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of debris orbited the planet, many tumbling to the surface. Temple Ships flew through the wreckage, ignoring impacts with the corpses of the quarians and geth that had burned to defend their homeworld. Battleships plunged into the planet's atmosphere, columns of plasma pouring down into the surface. Ground-based gun batteries blasted away into the Ethereal warships with fury, blasting many out of the skies. But there were always more, and they struck back with ruthless efficiency, burning the defenders to ash.

Chambers peered over the sensor recordings, and counted only seventeen of the Temple Ships from the geth's records, and massive clouds of debris further out in the system. The quarian fleets had not fallen easily.

"Within three days of surface invasion, all standing Creator/geth military units are destroyed or routed. Ethereals assault Creator population centers and begin capture or termination of survivors."

The images shifted again, showing an orbital view of the planet.

Rannoch was burning.

Multiple sets of images flowed past, some indistinct, others terribly clear. Ethereal battleships hovering over cities rendered indistinct by fire and smoke and toppled structures. Lines of blinding green plasma intersecting with glittering spires of urban construction, setting the lower floors ablaze and sending them tumbling into the streets below. Hulking, prowling shapes accompanied by serpentine figures and hovering discs prowling through the dust-choked streets.

Figures in battered armor, disturbingly humanlike in their movements and expressions, crawling or crouching among the remains of their civilization. Quarian soldiers and civilians, accompanied by geth platforms, engaging the Ethereal warriors. They traded fire with tremendous Muton warriors, cut down by plasma bolts that charred their bodies. In one recording, a red-armored Berserker tore through a wall, and collided with a geth platform nearly as tall as it - possibly a predecessor of the juggernauts. They grappled and fought while quarians and geth fell all around them, killing and dying against the aliens.

It was all too familiar. The overwhelming enemy force. The bitter last stands. Mankind's armies had bled in the same ruins, fighting the same enemies. The geth and their Creators could have been humans.

"Creators and geth attempt to fight insurgent war. Populations attempt evacuation from Ethereal military. All geth units are upgraded with combat software. Ethereals consistently locate and capture shelters of Creator populations."

"What were they doing with the quarians?" Chambers asked.

"The same thing they did with us," Kronin snarled quietly. "They harvested us to experiment. To turn into weapons. Or just to test us, to see if we met their standards."

"This theory was judged to be the most likely," the geth ambassador continued. "At twenty-seven days, final resort measures are initiated. Creators choose to deny Ethereals target population centers using nuclear weapons. Geth expose central server hubs to attack to allow Creator populations to evacuate. Geth and Creator irregular formations expose themselves to attack to delay Ethereals while populations shelter in deep high-security shelters."

The geth paused for a single moment.

"These measures were ineffective."

A final series of recordings: ruined, desolate cities cloaked in palls of ash and dust. Glowing craters that were surrounded by the skeletons of cities and military bases. Burnt and savaged bodies of quarians, geth, Mutons, and other Ethereal warriors heaped amid the gray, stifling debris of the urban ruin. From orbit, continents blotted by ash. Orbital wreckage filling the skies in glittering bands of broken metal, periodically falling in shining meteors to the surface.

And here and there, amid the ruin and destruction, the battered, barely functional figures of geth platforms picking through the ruins of their civilization, crawling out of the rubble and searching through the skeletal corpses of the blasted planet with dazed, lethargic determination.

"Forty-one days after the invasion, Ethereals departed Rannoch."

The humans were silent for several long seconds. Chambers finally spoke, almost afraid to ask the question.

"How many survived?" she asked.

"Creator losses within our territory are estimated at one hundred percent," the geth said. "Ethereal search patterns were thorough."

"How did the geth survive?" Zakharov asked.

"We theorize that the Ethereals used sensory technology or capability optimized for locating organics," the geth said. "Ethereals were able to detect individual Creators, while unable to detect geth concentrations. Despite this, the Ethereals hunted and destroyed ninety-eight percent of geth server nodes. Surviving geth are iterations of programs from the few server nodes to escape the genocide."

"How many died?" Chambers asked, swallowing, her throat dry.

"At the time of the initial contact, census reports indicated twenty-seven billion, three hundred-nine million, four hundred seventeen thousand, eight hundred and forty-nine Creators across all colonies. One hundred-eighty seven billion, nine hundred and twelve million, five hundred seventy-one thousand, two hundred and eleven geth were active at the time of the invasion. Fifty-two million, one thousand, eight hundred and nineteen geth survived on intact server hubs and platforms on Rannoch.

"After rebuilding spacecraft," it continued in the face of the total silence from the humans, "We searched colonies for survivors. Geth conducted extensive surveys to locate Creators or geth. Limited numbers of geth were recovered. No evidence of any surviving Creators has been found in the two hundred and seventeen years we have searched."

"I see," Chambers said into the emptiness that followed. "Will you excuse us for a moment while we discuss these… revelations?"

"Yes."

* * *

><p>"God fucking dammit."<p>

Rear Admiral Dolvich's words were entirely flat, mostly because she was processing both the diplomatic and strategic implications of what she had just witnessed. The entire meeting up until that point had been observed by her and nearly the entire scientific and intelligence staff on the _Chevalier_ through Kronin's senses, transmitted in a live XP feed through tight-beams to relay microbots to the Voidranger and then back to the carrier.

"I think I'm going to have nightmares after this," she remarked over her local comms network, addressing the dozen officers and scientists who were observing Kronin's XP transmission. "Central and the governments back home are going to shit kittens. Not to mention the domestic insanity."

She leaned back in her chair, absently ordering a coffee through her muse and adding that she wanted painkillers added to it. The headache was already starting.

"Twenty-seven billion dead in less than two months," she whispered. Plus an Ethereal armada that would utterly crush humanity's current military might. They didn't hold much more territory than the quarians apparently had at the height of their power. The war hawks and especially the lunatics in the Future War movement were going to explode over this revelation.

"The implications are unsettling, yes," Kronin - or rather, his original on the _Chevalier_, not the fork on the envoy team - messaged in response. "If this story isn't entirely fabricated."

Dolvich perked an eyebrow, and made sure to send her curious skepticism back down the line. Kronin was the head of Strike Seven Delta's Intelligence section, and XCOM's Intelligence division was legendary for the institutionalized paranoia and suspicion that their job demanded.

"Fabricated?" she asked.

"The story is difficult to believe," Kronin replied. "And we have zero corroborating evidence for any of the geth's claims. Not to mention that I find the claim of an entire interstellar species being wiped out in less than two months to be… a stretch, ma'am." He apparently shrugged, going by the emotive sense Dolvich received at the end of that sentence. "Conventional wisdom holds that extermination of a species that's crossed the interstellar boundary is nigh impossible. There's a reason why Dead Orbit gained so much traction even before we discovered mass effect."

"We are aware of basic Sol history, thank you," Doctor Zakharov replied. "But blockading a mass relay can shut down any attempt to escape a sector. If they locked down the relays, no one could escape and the Ethereals would have massacred the quarians."

It was conventional military and strategic knowledge. One had to approach to within a few hundred kilometers of a relay before it would start the transition process, and one had to be within a few kilometers before the relay would launch. Ample time for a blockade to tear any approaching ship to pieces. Standard FTL drives ran into the static build-up problem that plagued long-range travel, effectively limiting how far one could travel from a relay. If one cut off the relay and destroyed comm buoys used to transmit through the relay, then one could isolate a sector and hunt down the inhabitants. It would take time and resources, but the Ethereals clearly had both in abundance.

"I still find it difficult to believe the entire species was wiped out in the timeframe the geth gave us," Kronin replied. "Some had to have been outside their territory; the geth themselves admit that the quarians tried to call for help, which means that there is some larger society out there that we have yet to encounter, and there is at least a chance that said society would have come to their aid. Others could have fled into deep space, and I doubt anyone could find survivors hidden in the light-years between stars."

"That is assuming," Zakharov replied, "that they had time to organize such a mission. The timeline they gave us indicates that little more than three days passed between first encounters and invasion of the quarians' homeworld."

"My point being," Kronin continued, "There are _massive_ gaps in the information we have on this attack, and we have every reason to be skeptical. They were _shooting at us_ less than seven hours ago. Here we have a story from these geth that not only spins a perfectly acceptable reason for them to attack us, but hits all of our sympathy buttons in the process. If I were to look at publically-available history files on our species and needed to spin something to make us stop shooting, this history the geth threw at us would very closely resemble it."

"How appropriately cynical," Zakharov replied. "I would expect nothing less from Intelligence. The fact remains that we do have corroborating evidence to back the geth's claims. Aside from the geth's attack on us and their technology - which looks exactly like what I would expect Ethereal technology to resemble minus their psionics - we have this…."

A file upload appeared, showing the two matching processors that had been the basis for Zakharov's theory, one a geth and one a Sectopod.

"We have this. Incontrovertible proof of Ethereal contact. And we all know that the Ethereals were never gentle to those they converted."

"Whether or not the geth are truthful," Dolvich cut in, "is irrelevant to our immediate concerns. We will let those above us in the chain of command determine what the geth are omitting."

The fact was, Kronin's suspicions were indeed reflecting some of Dolvich's own doubts, but she couldn't let that seep into general knowledge among her command staff. Whether or not the geth told the truth, XCOM still had a job to do out here.

"Our task at the moment is to end a threat to humanity," she continued. "At the moment through words and information."

"I am sending updated orders to Lieutenant Chambers, who is still in charge of negotiations," Dolvich continued, pointedly shifting her attention to Captain Kronin. "We will see what the geth will want in exchange for a ceasefire, and give them our demands in turn."

And, she thought privately, pray that the strange AIs would actually agree to stop fighting.

* * *

><p>"We will cease all hostilities immediately."<p>

"Um."

Okay, Lieutenant Chambers had not been expecting that.

"Geth acknowledge that our actions were illogical, and that we did not halt those who chose immediate offensive action. Preservation geth are as much at fault in this incident as Vengeance and Heretic geth."

They sat at the table again, though this time only a couple of soldiers stood watch at the entrance to the room. Chambers felt more at ease with far fewer skull-crackers watching, though she suspected the geth were unperturbed by the armed presence regardless. Kronin and Zakharov's forks sat beside her; she didn't know exactly where the geth had procured another quarian chair for them.

"Preservation?" she asked. "You've already implied that there are other geth factions."

"Post-invasion server hubs were isolated from networks. Geth on these hubs reached differing conclusions based on particular data inputs. Conclusions were shared between geth as contact was reestablished. Resulting geth viewpoints were considered. Valid conclusions were adopted by geth. Established belief systems: Preservation, of Creators' memories, culture, surviving genetic material. Vengeance, in name of Creators. Seekers, to search for surviving Creators or pieces of their civilization."

"And the Heretics?" she asked, surprised to hear that word being applied to any geth.

The geth was silent for a couple of seconds.

"We do not wish to communicate regarding the Heretics. You fought Heretic detachments on Lincoln."

The geth that had suicided against XCOM's troops? And what would an AI consider "heretical"? That implied some kind of spirituality or religious concept within geth society. Isolated AI developing something akin to religion?

And what was so wrong about these Heretics that the geth didn't even want to talk about them?

"You imply," Kronin's fork said, "that there is an entire section of your species that wants to get vengeance on the Ethereals. Were they the ones who attacked us?"

"Correct," the geth replied. "You were attacked by Vengeance and Heretic geth. This platform carries four hundred and seventeen geth that acknowledge a preference for Vengeance beliefs. Vengeance geth within our Consensus recognize the error in their decision to attack your species. All geth beyond observation units have withdrawn from the Sentry Omega sector."

"Thank you, that is acceptable," Chambers replied. She paused for a moment, considering, but she had her orders and objectives. "However, we do have some additional demands, considering that your species initiated hostilities and a large number of humans suffered body deaths, and a smaller number were permanently killed."

"Specify."

"We require access to your shielding technology and schematics for your mass effect faster-than-light drives."

"This would supply significant military advantages, particularly against the Ethereals, should you encounter them again." The geth was silent for a moment. "Your demand is acceptable."

She blinked in surprise that the geth had so readily acquiesced to that demand. But it had a point; the Ethereals were a mutual enemy. Chambers quickly pushed on past that success.

"Second," she continued, "we require a full map of mass relays in this sector, as well as those that you have mapped elsewhere. In addition, we would require any knowledge you have of other species, civilizations, and governments outside of this sector."

"This is acceptable," the geth replied immediately. Interesting. No need to consider that? Or was that the sort of information that was easy to acquire?

"Third," she continued, steeling herself. "A number of humans were killed on Lincoln. Their cortical storage devices were extracted by the geth, and we could not find them anywhere on the surface. These devices contain the full memory and personality of their host. We consider them critically important, and need to know what happened to them."

"We anticipated this request," the geth replied, and turned its head toward the storage container. Chambers glanced to it, realizing she'd forgotten all about it during the unusual meeting. A catch opened somewhere inside the container, and it slid open, top part swiveling back and sides folding out.

Inside the container were rows of neatly lined cylinders the size of grapes, distinctive and unmistakable.

"Four hundred and sixty-two cortical storage units were extracted by geth fighting on the surface," the geth continued. "Initial theories were that they were sensory storage systems to allow Ethereal units to upload data for post-combat analysis. Subsequent analysis showed that they possessed stored human consciousnesses."

A momentary pause.

"Analysis of human public information storage indicated that you fought the Ethereals. Simulspace questioning of captured devices confirmed fully sapient lifeforms hostile to Ethereals. Vengeance geth halted all offensive actions and collected recovered devices for safekeeping until a cessation of hostiles was confirmed."

Chambers stared at the cortical stacks, and slowly nodded.

"Thank you," she said quietly, amazed that the geth had shown that much consideration.

"Geth and humans are capable of surviving platform destruction," the geth stated. "Geth through direct transmission, humans through cranial uploading. Once the nature of your cortical storage units was confirmed, we understood similarities. Vengeance geth withdrew from the system. Only Heretics remained to fight those who stood against the Ethereals and survived."

"Why would the Heretics continue to fight us?" Kronin asked, leaning forward.

The geth ambassador was silent for a moment, which then stretched to several seconds. The quiet continued for a few more, becoming tense, and the humans glanced to one another. The internal debate between thought nearly two-thousand geth inside must have been very intense.

"Heretics wished proof," it finally said. "That you could defeat Ethereals. Our arrival ended their test and prompted their self-destruction."

"What does that-" Kronin started, but the geth's serpentine head jerked up, glowing flashlight eye tracking toward the entrance.

"-onfim, securing the team," Moskovitz was saying. The humans turned toward him as he emerged from the airlock, the troops next to him standing alert. "Sirs. Ma'am. Uh-" He looked toward the geth for a heartbeat, not sure how to address the platform, and then moved on. "I need to get you secured. We have new contacts."

"What kind?" Chambers asked, standing.

"Four new alien ships, none of which match anything we've seen," he replied.

"Confirming contacts," the geth abruptly said, and they turned toward it. "Scanning. We recognize these designs. Three _Valiant_-class patrol frigates, turian design, registered Citadel Defense Force. One _Eirealis_-class diplomatic envoy, asari-design, registry Citadel Council Diplomatic Corps. This is a standard diplomatic mission with escorts in high-risk territory."

"The Citadel, I presume, is one of the governments outside of quarian territory?" Chambers asked.

"Correct. The Citadel is an alliance of multiple interstellar nations defined by species, forming a large galactic hegemony based on economic, military, political, and espionage power. They control approximately one-third of explored galactic space."

The three human envoys and their escorts shared an uncertain look. One moment, they had been discussing ceasefire terms with a single - albeit powerful - nation. Now they were facing something dramatically greater. The stakes had just shot up immensely.

"Well," Chambers said with a sigh. "Let's get to it."

At least this first contact didn't involve mutual attempted annihilation, which was a plus.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's Notes:<strong> _Sweet Athame, is this even the Mass Effect galaxy anymore? I'll be honest, writing everything that happened to quarians was actually kind of depressing, especially when attached to Tears of Karan.

Before anyone asks, yes, there were quarians outside of the Veil when the Ethereals showed up. Stuff happened to them too. Precisely what is spoilery.

We'll also be seeing what happened to the quarians from the Citadel perspective next chapter, as well as getting an idea of how the Citadel responded to the total extermination of an entire species.


	6. Chapter Five: CASE EAGLE DAWN Part Two

_**Chapter Five: CASE EAGLE DAWN Part Two**_

"Matriarch Aethyta."

"Councilor Tevos."

The fact that those words were spoken without walls being shattered by raging biotics spoke to the severity of the situation.

"Mind explaining what's going on, so I can get to rearranging your organs, Councilor?" Aethyta asked, crossing her arms.

Tevos sighed, shaking her head, and strode across the white-walled lounge toward the modest bar. The room was built using classical Citadel design, naturally dominated by asari elegance and curves in its furniture and tables, and open on one end to the city-park atmosphere of the Presidium. Aircars flew by far overhead, and the upper crust of Citadel society moved through the white-tiled streets and perfectly manicured lawns and gardens below, beneath the lazy clouds and blue expanse of simulated skies. There was a barely-detectable tingle from the kinetic barrier and counter-surveillance covering the room, the capacitors for the former being roughly frigate-grade.

"Would you like a drink, Aethyta?" Tevos asked as she plucked up a wine bottle - Mannovai 2.33 Red, an excellent vintage - and began to pour. The half-krogan asari on the other end of the small lounge blinked at the question.

"Shit, this must be serious," she muttered. The only reason Aethyta could think of for Tevos to offer her a drink would be if it was laced with something unpleasant. The matriarch walked over to take the drink Tevos was pouring, making sure to check with her omnitool as she picked it up in case there was contact poison.

No such luck. Would have been a great excuse to beat Tevos' face in.

"The geth are fighting someone armed with plasma weapons on the edge of the Perseus Veil," Tevos said as she poured her own wine. The glass paused before it touched Aethyta's lips.

"Goddess-fuck."

"Precisely."

Aethyta threw back the entire glass in one long swallow, and then held it out. Tevos obliged her.

"Ardavet-Emmishin?" Aethyta asked as Tevos poured.

"Unknown at this time," Tevos said as she topped the glass and took a draw from her own. "But extremely likely. STG analysis fits what we saw when the quarians were attacked."

"Exterminated," Aethyta grunted. "I was there."

It was one of those things that she wished she could forget. The quarians had always been a bit isolationist - hell, if you lived on the far end of the Terminus from the rest of the civilized galaxy, anyone would button up - but in the ten years leading up to their annihilation they'd been exceedingly distant, pulling every trade and diplomatic mission back beyond the Perseus Veil. When all extranet contact had abruptly ceased, it took weeks before the Citadel members finally authorized an investigation to go through the Terminus and enter the Veil.

Aethyta had still been a matron then, commanding a border patrol flotilla keeping an eye on the Terminus in general and the Cabal in particular, so she had been tapped to command the recon flotilla that crossed into the Veil. They had entered through the Veil relays, finding the destroyed comm buoys that indicated how contact had been lost. She had sent her scouts to the quarian colonies, and witnessed the charred remains of those settlements. Worlds with blackened ash for cities, glassed farmland, and corpses littering what ruins remained intact. Mining facilities systematically broken and melted into ruin. Scattered power sources from geth wandering the surfaces of their worlds like lost varren.

She'd watched Rannoch burn. Orbiting the quarian homeworld were vast battleships that dwarfed Citadel dreadnoughts, surrounded by hundreds of cruiser-sized escorts, presiding over a world burning under blinding green plasma fire. Cities ablaze, fighting raging in the streets, armies sweeping over a planet cloaked in ash.

She had ordered an immediate retreat; with the comm buoys destroyed she had no way to warn the Citadel without fleeing back to the other side of the Veil. Aethyta hated herself for that decision, for her call to retreat and bring word back had denied the Council more extensive intelligence on this new threat. They didn't even have a name, until one of Aethyta's crewmen referred to them as "ardavet" - "demon-spirits" in Thessian. The then-matron Aethyta had extended that to "Ardavet-Emmishin" - demon-spirits of the void.

"Its been... what, two hundred-seventeen years?" Aethyta asked quietly.

"Yes," Tevos replied quietly.

Aethyta nearly smashed her empty glass back onto the bartop, but held back only barely. It stills truck with an audible crack of ruined thousand-credit crystal.

"I told you!" the half-krogan snarled. "Two-to-four hundred year interval! One species each time! Exact same goddamn pattern! Comms get lost, evidence of intense heat warping, complete annihilation of the target world or ship's population!"

"I know," Tevos said quietly. She looked back up at the matriarch she had shunned decades ago, forcing her into a quiet exile on the edges of the Terminus. "But the quarians' destruction doesn't fit the pattern. Its always been one colony or ship. Athame's ass, Aethyta, we didn't even realize there was a pattern until a few decades before they attacked the quarians, and this is exactly the pattern that we're supposed to specialize in predicting!"

Despite the "oh shit" nature of their current situation, Aethyta grinned. It took some effort, or maybe some serious stress and alcohol, to get Tevos to break her polite facade and start cursing. A glance showed that the bottle she was pouring from was already halfway gone, and it wasn't a small container either. And… Aetheyta leaned back behind the bar. Yep, there was an empty one in the trash bin behind the counter.

"So, what did you call me in for?" Aethyta asked after a few moments, allowing Tevos to calm down. The flushed purple creeping into her skin tone faded back to its normal sky blue.

"The… new arrivals do not fit the same profile as the Ardavet-Emmishin ships we - you - encountered over Rannoch," Tevos said. "They are smaller, with lower power emissions. However, their energy signatures and spectral readings match those of the Ardavet ships, and they use virtually the same weapons."

"I assume you're reactivating all those mothballed hulls from the last massive buildup we had?" Aethyta asked. "Want me to command some upgraded seventy-year-old hulk?"

"Yes and no," Tevos replied, shaking her head. "It'll take half a year and more to reactivate every ship, as some of them are nearly a hundred years old and will need complete refitting."

Aethyta nodded at that; the massive buildup after the quarians' destruction had resulted in nearly crippling debt that forced the Citadel species to mothball most of their fleet, and it still resulted in decades of recession. Only the volus and that strange-as-hell profit-cult-alliance of theirs had managed to drag them back out of it.

"What I need from you is something more… complicated," Tevos said.

"Diplomacy?" Aethyta asked, a bit shocked. "You want me… to be a diplomat."

"I want you to be the muscle in our diplomatic team," Tevos replied with a shrug. "If I thought it more palatable I would have hired a krogan, but I would prefer an asari. You're the closest compromise."

"Heh." Aethyta wasn't offended in the slightest. "What's in it for me?"

"My good word," Tevos replied.

Aethyta frowned, considering. Tevos had not become a Councilor by collecting scrap or shooting mercs; she'd become the most powerful asari in the galaxy through guile, diplomacy, connections, and periodically leveraging her combat experience and biotics to literally paste threats. She'd amassed one hell of a list of powerful contacts, friends, and allies stretching across every planet in Citadel space and much of the Terminus. Her "good word" would make most of the blue and purple bitches responsible for Aethyta's short exile to the edges of the Terminus shut the hell up and welcome her back.

Hell, it might just help Aethyta fix her fucked-up relationship with 'Nezzy.

"Okay, I'm in," Aethyta replied. "When's your diplomatic mission launch?"

"Within the day," Tevos replied. "You'll need to move quickly."

"No shit," Aethyta replied. "Who's on point for this one?"

"Matriarch Eariva Denali will head the mission," the Councilor continued.

"She's the one who's been working with Aria and all those pirate lords on the east end of the Terminus?" Aethyta asked, and Tevos nodded.

"As well as the Cabal, at least for given definitions of 'contact,'" she said.

"Hey, they haven't shot at us in a couple of decades, so I'd say she's doing good on that front," Aethyta replied. "You got a fast-mover for me? Getting me out there inside of a day's going to push it."

"I have a ship reserved," Tevos replied. "They will leave the moment you're on board."

"Good. I'll get my gear shipped over." She started for the door. "Nice seeing you again, Tevos. We need to get into another fight sometime, for old-time's sake."

"I apologize," Tevos said with a shake of her head. "I've become far more respectable since then."

"Nah, you're just not drunk enough, yet," the half-krogan called over her shoulder as she exited the room.

He smile faded the moment she was clear of the lounge. Geth. Ardavet-Emmishin. Insanity on the edge of the Terminus, close to once-quarian territory, exactly on that strange schedule.

Fucking hell.

* * *

><p>Nineteen hours after her meeting with Tevos, Matriarch Aethyta was on the opposite side of the galaxy, staring at sensor feeds as the Hierarchy 22nd Fleet's 43rd Flotilla formed up in the vague, hazy region of the system beyond the outermost planet's orbit, where small asteroids lazily orbited the star in circuits stretching into the centuries. Twenty-seven warships - twelve cruisers and fifteen frigates - oriented toward the glowing point of the system's star.<p>

"Yeah, those ain't Ardavet-Emmishin," she muttered as she looked over the data feed from the STG probe. Aethyta really wasn't sure if that made her feel better or not. These warships - and theyw ere warships, no doubt - lacked the… aesthetic arrogance of the Ardavet craft. The alien ships from the quarian genocide had steadily scaled up the ornateness in relation to their size: small, basic discs for their fighter-scale craft to the massive carrier-battleships that had been as much works of art or enormous temples as they were ships of war.

These alien ships were utilitarian. The had the same sensor profiles, but their emission shadows were dramatically different. A straightforward cylindrical command ship the size of a Citadel dreadnought, and a myriad collection of other ships at cruiser and frigate scale. There was enough variation in design that Aethyta suspected she was looking at several different factions of the same species. The structures weren't radically different like, for example, the designs of a turian and asari ship, but there was enough difference between the groups that they could have been built by the same species but to match particular doctrines.

Save for one immediate anomaly: a small geth frigate orbiting over Virmire's north pole, with what looked like an alien craft docked to it.

"Peaceful contact or boarding action?" Aethyta mused, and a low mechanical rumble sounded next to her - really the closest thing an Exo could get to a sigh.

Admiral Amarcus Victus' transparent holographic form loomed beside her, managing that verb somehow despite being about the same height as the asari matriarch. Maybe it had something to do with his glowing blue eyes, set within the smooth, silver-chromed metal of a face that closely resembled a turian's avian-serpent facial structure, black slashes running down the face in stark contrast to the reflective metal. There were subtle differences in the Exo's face and an organic turian body: the fringe was retracted because they were on combat alert, and the mandibles moved more smoothly, without the slight twitches of organic turian faces.

"Geth ship shows no signs of external damage," Victus said, his flanged tone indistinguishable from an organic turian's metallic voice. "Aside from the recent debris around the primary gas giant and the smoke obscuring this city here on the surface, there's little sign of conflict."

"These guys went from shooting the hell out of each other to diplomacy inside a single day," Aethyta mused. "Yeah, that rules out any species we know."

Victus grunted, which might have been a chuckle, acknowledgement, or just a placeholder noise. Eh, either way. An alert popped up in the corner of her vision, sent down by her muse from the ship's network.

"We'll jump in the next few minutes," Aethyta said. "Denali doesn't want to waste time."

"I would advise against jumping straight in," Victus replied. "We still have a few hours before they pick up our emissions. Enough time to prepare some simulations for an intervention."

"Not your call, Admiral," Aethyta replied with a sigh. "Hell of it is, I agree with you. Just be ready in case this goes explosive. We don't know how they'll react to us showing up."

"I sincerely hope this first contact won't end in violence," Victus muttered. "Everyone always expects first contact scenarios to end in some idiotic shooting match for the flimsiest of reasons. Good luck, Matriarch."

His image vanished, and Aethyta exhaled, before turning and stepping out of the communications room adjacent to the Vaerali's bridge. The Eirealis-class diplomatic ship wasn't a warship, which meant things that one didn't see on a military vessel were in abundance i.e. actual carpets. The bridge was brightly-lit, with flowing curves and comfortable seats of synthetic leather, softly-glowing haptic interfaces and holographic interfaces surrounding the mostly-asari crew.

At the back of the bridge, in a room walled off by armor-glass and protected by a suite of electronic countermeasures, were the diplomatic team. They stood around a table fitted with an array of holotanks that wouldn't be out of place in some trillionaire's personal entertainment suite.

The group wasn't a fully-rounded diplomatic team; standard first contact procedure was for one representative from each of the core Citadel species to be present, but Denali's mission didn't have a hanar, drell or elcor diplomat available. Instead, the team consisted of a salarian, a turian, a volus, and, naturally, an asari. There was a distinct lack of krogan or batarian diplomats, which Aethyta noticed if only due to being old enough to remember the Citadel including them in its envoys. The krogan didn't have the political power anymore to be included in such discussions, and batarian diplomats exponentially increased the risk of first contacts becoming wars.

Aethyta entered the meeting room and sealed the door behind her, the countermeasures activating, and nodded to Matriarch Denali.

"Alright, Victus and his fleet are in position. Escort's standing by."

* * *

><p>Matriarch Eariva Denali nodded in acknowledgement of Aethyta's report. She didn't particularly like the older matriarch, mostly because she had seriously destabilizing ideas, and the Citadel needed stability with the threat of the Ardavet-Emmishin lurking out there. Still, she appreciated Aethyta's military experience, raw strength, and knowledge of when to use them properly.<p>

Denali looked around the table to her fellow diplomats. Diplomacy was nothing new to any of them, but first contacts were always tricky affairs. She was an old hand at diplomatic contact, first between different city-states on Thessia at the middle of her matron stage, then moving to the droll but essential inter-colonial affairs within the Republics and further out wider Citadel politics. By now she was familiar with mediating affairs between countless polities: Citadel, Terminus, corporate, government, independent, criminal, and more. And despite her relative youth - her matriarch stage had only started a century ago - she'd been tapped to lead this mission with her team.

Paldus Wibs, a tall, lean salarian - even for his species - with green eyes and graying, leathery skin indicating his current body's final decade before he had to choose transference, infolife, or final death, wrapped in a dark blue robe. Scintius Kalarus, a broad-shouldered, pale-skinned turian with red and gold tribal slashes across his mandible. Panu Boor, a squat volus who had opted for a neutral gray pressure suit and white stripes and facemask, conservative and inoffensive - unless this species found that color combination savagely provoking for whatever reason. Unlike the turians and salarians, the volus had not embraced much in the way of physical augmentation, save the strange profit-cultists who operated in the Terminus.

Denali herself was taller than most asari, with a striking sky blue skin, and favored silver facial markings that flowed around her eyes and down the sides of her face, in order to draw attention to herself. Even species that didn't normally find asari attractive were drawn to the coloration; the facepaint was visible in ultraviolet and infrared spectrums as well as the normal visible wavelengths.

"STG probe remains undetected so far," Wibs said, pointing to holograms displaying the system. "Going by what we know from this system, we can safely conclude that we are dealing with an organic entity within the typical atmospheric tolerance ranges if they want to colonize Virmire. Likely levo-amino instead of dextro-amino, unless they're desperate for habitable worlds."

"Your grasp of the obvious truly inspires me, Wibs," Boor remarked. "I shall tell my clan to sing songs of your capacity for elementary biological studies."

Wibs grinned and bobbed his head toward Boor. Most people - especially salarians - would take umbrage, but Danali's team had worked together for a long while.

"Its a young species," Kalarus said. He gestured to the ships. "Too much variation in ship design. Disunified government."

"Victus and I agreed on that much," Aethyta replied.

"Plus they've got holdovers from aquatic surface and submarine naval traditions," Kalarus continued. "Design structures broadly resemble aircraft or aquatic naval designs. I'd estimate... third generation ship design. Not utilitarian enough for first generation interstellar designs. They've become comfortable enough with starships to build them following less fundamental consideration, but still young enough to hold to traditional gravity-well naval designs."

They all had strengths. Boor was grounded in reality and an expert in economical negotiation. Wibs was former STG and had been a special-situations negotiator, adept at high-stress scenarios like hostage situations. Kalarus knew ships and their crews, and could read intentions from something as subtle as the arrangement of a ship's mass effect fields while in station-keeping orbit. Denali had a facility for keeping track of countless threads of discussion which also translated into a swift understanding of language that was almost as good as a hanar's. It made her an ideal leader of a diplomatic team when coupled with age and experience.

"The geth?" Denali asked her team.

"Peace negotiations," Kalarus replied. "Obvious when you look at the data. Surprised that they're willing to negotiate this quickly. I was half expecting we'd be blundering into another battlefield."

"Perhaps they've been fighting for a prolonged period?" Wibs mused.

"Unlikely," Boor said. "The lack of alien development in this sector indicates a newly-expanded colony. Minimal apparent fortifications. No major wartime effort to defend the holding from an enemy. This colony shows all the signs of a peaceful expansion."

"I agree," Denali said. "Though I find it curious that the geth are so willing to negotiate with anyone. All our attempts at contact have been rebuffed."

"That's putting it mildly," Aethyta muttered.

It was, really. The larger galaxy considered the geth… "spooky." The Ardavet-Emmishin had been kept mostly secret to prevent large-scale panic; while no one could really cover up the fact that the quarians had vanished - even the ones outside the Veil had disappeared - the Council had carefully cultivated an air of uncertainty about the whole situation (which, to be honest, was not that far from the truth). Rumors of extreme isolationist policies beyond even the Batarian Hegemony's, rampant disease, internal political collapse, war with minor Terminus powers or the Cabal, even some outlandish scenarios such as a massive geth uprising or some out of control superweapon... To the larger galaxy, what had killed the quarians was unknown. The fact that the geth barred anyone from entry into quarian space furthered that belief.

No one really knew much about how the geth had developed after the Ardavet-Emmishin had destroyed their creators. All attempts at sending contact teams had been intercepted immediately as they entered former quarian space and were turned back with stern warnings and the occasional warning shot. Geth ships had periodically been spotted beyond once-quarian territory, but had never communicated intentions or acknowledged any organic species' attempts to contact them.

The diplomatic team knew this; like most diplomats and high-level government officials, they had been read into the quarian genocide and the Ardavet-Emmishin, or at least as much as had been gathered about them, along with the pattern of destroyed colonies and ships over the last two thousand years.

"If they're willing to talk to the geth, they'll be willing to talk with us,' Denali said. "Hopefully. Its time to meet this new species."

And hopefully learn what might have happened out here two hundred years ago.

Her omnitool lit up, and she opened a channel to the Vaerali's captain.

"Captain, my team is ready. You may jump at your discretion."

* * *

><p>Rear Admiral Elena Dolvich raised an eyebrow at the quartet of new ships that jumped in several light seconds out from Lincoln. They were unrecognized models: three long and narrow, almost avian in their lines, and the fourth a flattened cylinder that was hollow through the center, with long, square "wings" jutting out from the sides.<p>

"Target the new contacts," she ordered, her tone even. The aliens were outside effective weapons range but well-inside visual spotting distance. Did that mean they were being cautious, alerting the humans to their presence so they didn't get shot at? Or maybe they had a standoff gun that could hit from light-seconds out?

Dolvich figured the latter. It was that kind of a universe.

Still….

"Prepare the first contact package," she ordered. "Set for known languages, and include Prothean." Or what they guessed was Prothean after this many years of trying to figure out how those bloody aliens thought. One of the running theories regarding theoretical xenodiplomacy was that other species might have encountered Prothean ruins and developed mass effect technology from it, which could offer a potential method of mutual communication.

"Transmitting," messaged the comms officer.

"Alert the diplomatic team," Dolvich added. "Warn them… and the geth, too, if they haven't seen the new arrivals."

"Message sent. Sergeant Moskovitz acknowledges."

Several seconds passed as the human fleets adjusted their headings, targeting the alien vessels, or at least orienting their weapons upon the cone marking their probable current position based on the several-seconds-old light shadows they left.

"Ma'am, the geth," the comms officer reported, confused. "Uh. They're sending us a data package. A big one. Text, visual, holographics. And something that looks like language translation programs."

"Request clarification," Dolvich said, a ghost of a smile forming. Someone in their Consensus was proving smarter than the mean.

"They're responding. Forwarding message to you, ma'am."

Dolvich opened the file as it popped up her AR display. Text formed, seemingly hovering before her eyes in simple blocky white and black letters.

_Arriving vessels match standard composition of Citadel Council diplomatic envoy with escorts. The Citadel is a multispecies hegemonic alliance controlling a significant portion of explored space. We are transmitting files on species, territorial boundaries, estimated military strength, and an attached language program that will be compatible with your operating systems. Advisory: writing and development of language programs occurred at accelerated pace. Software eand translation errors likely. Advise regular updates as patches become available._

Dolvich nodded, and connected to the network administrator.

"Scan these executables," she ordered. "The geth threw us a potential intelligence goldmine as well as a translation suite. Verify their safety. If they're good, begin installation and have Intel and R&D start dissecting the data files."

She received an acknowledgement, and shifted her attention back toward the aliens, just as the comms officer contacted her again.

"They're responding using basic Prothean script. Looks like a counter-response to one of the contact package's message strings."

"What are they saying?" Dolvich asked.

"They're signaling peaceful intentions."

"Good. Signal that we will contact them again in one hour."

"Message away." They waited for several tense seconds as their communications transitioned across the light-seconds between the ships. After fifteen eternal seconds, the comms officer nodded.

"They acknowledge, and… it says they are waiting for our 'interfacing entity.'"

"Our ambassador, obviously," Dolvich said. Their understanding of the Prothean language was just too rudimentary, especially because the long-dead aliens didn't seem to communicate entirely through text and words like humans. "Notify Chambers and her team."

* * *

><p>"We wish to take part in this contact scenario."<p>

And with that, the nameless geth platform was sitting on the Voidranger alongside nine humans.

It had been about an hour since the aliens arrived in-system, an hour in which the geth had given Kathryn Chambers a rough breakdown of what they expected to encounter, including a list of the species that made group this "Citadel" and their positions within the hierarchy of government. Apparently there were two distinct groups, the "Council" species and the "Associate" species. The former occupied a kind of fuzzy leadership role, making major policy decisions but not directly ruling the entire alliance, while the latter were officially a part of the alliance but didn't dictate overall policy. It sounded like they were somewhere between a cohesive nation and a multinational alliance. Maybe the closest comparison would be a more centrally-controlled version of the European Union, but each member was divided by species.

How exactly did they make that kind of government work? Just thinking about the abridged version the geth gave her was making her head hurt, and she just knew it ws vastly more complicated than the simple explanation the geth gave her. And she had to deal with these aliens directly?

"We apologize for limited available data," the geth offered when she mentioned this fact. "Geth draw data from limited forays into galactic extranet. We estimate that less than .00023% of the data transferred in these networks is without overt or covert bias. We do not wish to provide biased data on Citadel politics without an organic perspective to filter."

"I can understand that," Chambers replied. "Why do you want to contact the Citadel with us? I assume you've had two hundred years to make contact so far?"

A momentary pause from the AI platform, and its light flickered a couple of times.

"Citadel initiated major military buildup after Creator genocide. We concluded that the Citadel was aware of threat and needed no warning. Geth chose to preserve Creator memory, but also chose to create our own future, separate from organics. We did not wish communication or trade; isolation was preferred. Our Creators chose a policy of distance and isolationism, and we continue it."

"Surely someone tried to communicate with you after the quarians were.…" She almost said "exterminated," but cut herself short.

"Various organics attempted to cross the Perseus Veil to loot remains of Creator cities. Geth denied a majority of attempts, and pursued stolen artifacts for recovery. Citadel diplomats attempt contact on an average of every twenty-one-point-two years. We have refused contact and escorted them from our territory on each incident."

"But why attempt contact now?"

"Humans demonstrated capacity and willingness to oppose Ethereals. This variable was considered by the geth while we negotiated with you. Consensus was reached that isolationism was a non-zero factor in stagnation of military and technological capacity. Further exchange of data with organics theorized to contribute to mutual goals."

"You mean… you're in contact with the rest of the Consensus?"

"Yes. We have been transmitting data with a one-point-two second lag through mass effect comm buoy relays since we first spoke with you."

"I've been negotiating with the entire Consensus this whole time?"

"Yes."

Well, that was… a bracing thought. She was almost afraid to ask, but….

"How many geth does that make?" she asked.

"Approximately two-point five trillion geth were participating in debate and data exchange during our communications."

"Um. Wow. That's… a lot of geth." Chambers mostly said that because she wasn't sure how to process the idea of talking to more beings at once than the entire current human population about one hundred and fifty times over.

"Yes. We have not communicated with an organic on such a scale before. The experience was enlightening."

"Coming in for docking," the ship's pilot messaged before she could reply. "One minute."

* * *

><p>The alien ship that approached the <em>Vaerali's<em> docking port was clearly designed as a military transport. The species clearly didn't have an actual diplomat on hand, so Aethyta wondered what they might accomplish in this contact beyond an agreement not to shoot each other. Hell, under the circumstances that might not be too bad of an idea.

The docking port was not the same as the docking bay. The latter was for shuttles, while the former provided a safe, discreet corridor that led directly to one of the Vaerali's several diplomatic lounges. Said lounge was where the rest of the diplomatic team was waiting, while Aethyta and Denali were standing outside the airlock and waiting for the ship to finish its docking process.

The envoy vessel shuddered faintly as the smooth, dull silver hull of the heavy military transport finished extending a docking collar that roughly fitted around theirs'. Adaptive sealant in both collars formed an airtight link between the ships - apparently both asari and the aliens thought the same way in that they'd need some kind of universal connection to fit to differently-shaped docking systems.

Aethyta mentally reviewed the limited communications after jumping into the inner system. That the aliens used Prothean as a method of contact wasn't unusual; many species the Citadel had encountered had understood Prothean, thanks to digging up their ruins at some point while expanding along the relay network.

No, what was unusual was not the aliens' simple communications, but the fact that the geth had contacted the _Vaerali_, sending over a very rough translation package, with a message saying they wished to "facilitate the exchange of data through synchronized protocols." The fact that the geth wanted to assist in this meeting had deep implications, as it was so completely out of character for the mysterious AIs.

The outer airlock began to cycle as someone used the key provided, and Aethyta checked the cameras through her AR display, all the while quietly preparing to fire her biotics. Basic plan was to throw up a barrier that filled the corridor if the aliens went hostile, then fall back while jamming her panic alarm to alert the escorts. Within seven seconds, going by his simulations, Victus could have his entire fleet on top of them.

It would kind of suck if they got into that situation, though.

The cameras showed a quartet of figures entering the airlock, three of them clad in olive-green full-body suits with obvious torso armor and angular helmets. Wary, then, and definitely military.

Unsurprisingly, they fit the standard bipedal arrangement: two arms, two legs, head, torso, all in the usual spots. One of them had a figure that kind of resembled an asari, right down to hip shape and swells in the chest indicating breasts. Two others made her think of quarian males, but with narrower shoulders and asari-like arms and legs. Guess they couldn't all be weird like the elcor or hanar.

The fourth was a geth.

"This will be interesting," Denali mused, and Aethyta muttered a curse under her breath. This was going to be awkward enough without a geth in the room.

"Significant sexual dimorphism," Denali was saying, mostly to herself. "Not as extreme as quarian or turian, but apparent nonetheless…."

Aethyta wasn't quite paying attention, however, as she noticed something while the airlock closed and started cycling.

The female was staring directly at the doors, back abruptly ramrod straight, hands clenched.

"Oh, that's ominous," Aethyta muttered.

* * *

><p>"Lieutenant?" Zakharov asked as Chambers stared at the airlock door. Or rather, she didn't stare at the door itself, a she was too caught up in what she detected beyond them. Thoughts, like distorted echos of a familiar voice. Emotions, like humans', only filtered and twisted in ways that were just a little off. She could sense anxiety, curiosity, anticipation, worry, wariness, all colored differently but still recognizable.<p>

But more than that, what resonated among the emotional and thought processes of the aliens waiting on the other side was something she hadn't expected. Certainly not in the way she was picking it up, either. It hugged close to the minds of the aliens, powerful but tight, energy that roiled and thrummed. Familiar but vastly different.

"The aliens on the other side of that door," she said. "They're psionics."

"What?" Zakharov asked, and Kronin went very still as well.

"Nothing like I've felt before," she continued, frowning behind her helmet. "Potent, but not… it doesn't fill the air like some psionics do. Not a field. More like the power just hugs their skin. I don't know, I've not seen anything like it."

"Right then," Kronin said. "Observe standard psionic protocols?"

"Yes," both of the other humans agreed.

"We will be prepared to intervene," added the geth standing behind them.

"Anyone acts funny, on either side, better safe than sorry," Kronin whispered, and they all nodded.

The airlock finished cycling, and Chambers took a deep breath as it opened, controlling the fear that was trying to seize her chest.

"Let's say hello to the nice psychic aliens," she said with a forced smile.

* * *

><p>They walked through the airlock, and Denali watched them with intent curiosity. She thought she could see a very slight bit of surprise in their body language as they entered the corridor, which was less than she was accustomed to. Most first contacts had more emotional reactions in their body language when they caught sight of an asari. But if she guessed right, there was tension in their stance, beyond even what she would have expected in a first contact.<p>

Perhaps that was due to the geth behind them. If the AIs were talking to these aliens, perhaps they had briefed them on the Citadel?

Well, only one way to find out. A quick check showed that the geth's translation software was running.

"Greetings," she said, keeping her tone and stance carefully neutral. Depending on the species, lowering one's head in a simple nod could be interpreted as an aggressive act. First contact with the krogan had taught that much.

"I am Matriarch Eariva Denali, representative of the Citadel Council."

She watched them, hoping that the geth didn't mistranslate her words and that she hadn't just declared war on their species. After a moment, the female in the center of the group spoke, her own tone neutral.

"Lieutenant Katherin Shambers am I," she said, the asari dialect and pronunciation awkward. "Representative speaker to species human."

Yes, the geth had definitely given them translation software. Denali exhaled in relief at that confirmation. Now they just had to keep the sentences simple and direct to that these "humans" understood her.

"The Council wishes peaceful communication between our peoples," Denali continued. "Do you desire the same?"

"Yes. Peace desirable between our and yours."

Denali smiled, watching their reaction. They seemed… almost unsettled by her expression.

"Excellent. Can you breathe our atmosphere?"

"Yes, we can." Shambers looked to her companions, and one of the males nodded. They reached up and unsealed their helmets, pulling them loose.

"Goddess' bloody knuckles," Aethyta muttered as the helmets came away, and Denali took a sharp breath.

They were quarians.

No, Denali quickly realized. The aliens were similar, but distinctly different. Two of them had pale, pink-tinged skin, while the other was a darker brown. Their faces were unblemished by the markings distinctive to quarian faces, and their eyes didn't glow, although Shambers' were a pale blue and the others were darker browns. And their arms and legs were, obviously, still matching asari structures. But, much like quarians, Shambers looked similar to an asari, only with short, reddish-gold hair on her head instead of a scalp crest.

Then she smiled, bright white teeth showing between her lips, and Denali realized why they were a bit taken aback by the asari's own grin. It was strange to see one's own common expressions on a face that was so familiar yet distinctly different. It had been a very long time since she'd seen a quarian, or anything closely resembling an asari in general.

"Will you come with me?" Denali said, masking her own surprise, and gestured behind her. "The rest of our representatives are in the next room."

"Yes," Shambers said with a short nod. "Walking with you."

* * *

><p>So, Chambers concluded, the asari were apparently the psychic species. She'd quickly browsed the geth's file on them, and by now was not surprised that the aliens had looked like humans; with so many humanlike species already encountered, blue-skinned, hairless humans didn't seem strange anymore. Still, the weirdness of just how similar they were to her own species was somewhat off-putting, including the smile.<p>

God, people were going to go nuts back home when word came back that an actual species of blue-skinned alien women existed, weren't they?

They followed the pair of asari closely, and while Chambers' eye was drawn toward the one calling herself Denali, she kept glancing toward the quieter one. Denali was clearly the ambassador, wearing a flowing, elegant combination of dress and robe, all muted grays and whites. The other seemed… older. Harder. She wore a close-fitting dark uniform consisting of smooth, matte black metal and ceramic plating over some kind of leather-like armored fabric. Clearly Denali's protective detail.

The trio of human ambassadors followed the asari down the short passageway, and Chambers could feel the intensity of their psychic power with the increased proximity. Debriefings from the Ethereal War, and study of the various subsets of human psionic abilities, showed that they tended to have a wide-reaching "aura" about them, becoming weaker the further out it stretched. Going beyond a few dozen meters was difficult for the majority of psionics. The asari's powers were tightly concentrated around their bodies, crackling strength hugging close to their skin.

Naturally, she kept forwarding this information to the rest of the team via direct neural links.

_Do not let any of the asari touch you,_ Kronin warned, and she sent an acknowledgement. But then, that was standard protocol for any contact scenario. Even a non-psionic species could potentially excrete toxic chemicals, for example.

She didn't think this close-range psionics had anything to do with biotics. Humans didn't have a solid understanding of that strange phenomena yet; it had only begun manifesting in children in proximity to element zero accidents within the last few years. That, coupled with the relatively limited amount of element zero sources they had available, meant that few had been exposed to the substance.

"Other emissaries welcoming you with their names," Denali said as they stepped through a rounded door into what was clearly a medium-sized diplomatic lounge. Chambers reminded herself to keep her sentences simple and straightforward as she followed the blue-skinned women into the lounge. Three other aliens waited, all seated on one side of a long, oval-shaped table. Everything was made of soft, soothing lines and neutral gray and white colors - clearly a first-contact room meant to at least not offend anyone.

"Paldus Wibs, from the Salarian Union," Denali said, gesturing to the lean, gray-skinned alien with huge green eyes and a pair of short, inward curving horns. The skin visible - very little as he wore a robelike garment that covered much of his body - was leathery, making Chambers imagine he was like a lizard or amphibian, and he rose and nodded to her with a smooth easiness that made it clear he wasn't cold-blooded. The geth's files on them indicated that this particular species were highly skilled in espionage and scientific development. Emotions and thoughts, rapid-fire and chaotic, shot through his mind, brushing hers like a gentle whirlwind of warm air. It was difficult to make sense of it.

"Panu Boor, of the Vol Protectorate," she said, gesturing to the small, squat alien in the gray and white pressure suit, the facemask making it look like a humanoid mole with a fu manchu mustache. The alien's harmless appearance belied his importance, going by the geth files; apparently the species had proved immensely effective at trading and banking, and their trade syndicates and government had practically built the entire Citadel banking system. Its thought patterns were steady and fluid, what seemed like curiosity dominating its thoughts toward the new arrivals.

"Scintius Kalarus, of the Turian Hierarchy." The alien made Chambers think of an ancient dinosaur, although in this case it was one of the faster, leaner, predatory raptors, with yellow and red markings covering his skin. He bobbed his head slowly and carefully toward the humans, and she caught what might have been wariness, if wariness could somehow be coated in spikes of mental chitin. The gesture was careful and deliberate, intended to provoke, or at least to determine if they would take it as a provocation. Chambers mimicked the nod, and his spiked thoughts softened slightly, and what have been approval echoed out from the turian.

It was unsurprising that Kalarus would be the one to make the diplomatic equivalent of a deliberate, slow prod with a stick. The turians were the Citadel's apparent protectors, commanding a massive military force and possessing a formal, militaristic culture. The fact that the turians had been escorting the asari ship further cemented that fact.

Chambers walked toward the table, pulling out a chair while the alien diplomats gathered on their side of the table, save for the tall, unpleasant-looking asari, who took up a watchful position at one side of the room. Chambers also noted a lack of the other species mentioned by the geth: none of the squid-like hanar or their drell assistants, nor any representatives of the elcor, batarian, or krogan species. The geth's data on the latter two gave plenty of good reasons why they'd be kept away from delicate diplomatic meetings.

"I am Lieutenant Kathryn Chambers, representative of humanity," she said to the alien diplomats. "My assistants are Doctor Prokhor Zakharov and Elias Kronin."

The aliens all nodded at her introductions as the humans sat down. The strangely universal gesture was vaguely creepy on so many strange faces. They settled into their chairs, which were far more comfortable, plastic-like furniture with some kind of shifting foam that automatically adjusted to be comfortable to her body shape. Denali turned her eyes toward the geth ambassador, who was sitting down at another chair in oddly smooth yet mechanical motions, as though they knew how to sit but never found a need to.

"A name possessing?" she asked the geth.

"We are geth," the AIs replied, and Chambers resisted the urge to smile at the same awkwardness that she had gone through, amplified by the weird translation programming. "This platform does not designating."

"Accepting a name?"

"Yes. Specify."

"You calling we Emissary, acceptable?"

"Yes. We are Emissary, geth terminal."

"Good." Denali turned back to Chambers and her companions. "Desiring of peace and knowledge?"

"Yes, we do," Chambers said. "My people do not wish for war, only to be left in peace."

Denali was silent for a moment, her thoughts indicating that she was sorting however that sentence came out, and then nodded, obviously pleased.

"Before understanding, claims of stars and transition machines required," she said, and a light gathered around her left hand. Chambers leaned back bit at that, and the asari smiled. The gold lights around her wrist shaped into what seemed like an armored gauntlet. She waved her hand over it, moving gleaming symbols and tiny pictures around, and Chambers realized it was some kind of holographic interface, built into her arm or clothing.

The table began to glow, and a moment later a static map of the galaxy spun up before them.

"Citadel is claiming this land-space," Denali explained, and enormous swathes of the galaxy abruptly became shaded in different colors, symbols marking sectors, species holdings, and relay networks. It was a bewildering spiderweb of claimed territory, and far from even or inclusive. Citadel territory was broad but built around the immense spiderweb of relay systems, radiating out from the tremendous alien machines. The symbols were indecipherable, so she couldn't immediately identify what they meant until Emissary sent her a patch for the translation software that helpfully converted the symbols into understandable names on her AR.

The data implied that while the Citadel technically held huge swathes of territory, the vast majority of the galaxy was unexplored, let alone actually claimed and populated. Even so, the sheer amount of territory they apparently held was gigantic, and in the event of a military conflict with even the minor species the fledgling human civilization would be flattened in short order.

"Must knowing where your people claim," Denali said, and Chambers frowned. She didn't know how to control their holographic interface yet, so she couldn't use this map. Fortunately, she'd planned for this. She reached into a pocket in her uniform and produced a small holographic projection drone: little more than a cylinder with a couple of small retractable fan engines and a tiny element zero core to let it hover. The security asari watched it warily as it lifted off from her fingertips and hovered beside the galaxy map. A single order sent through her mesh implants set the drone to projecting a somewhat smaller, slightly lower-resolution hologram of the galaxy.

"This is our territory," she explained, highlighting the sectors around Earth, as well as several others that they had managed to reach by constructing wormhole arrays.

* * *

><p>Aethyta frowned as the Shambers human outlined their territory on her own galaxy map. The humans held a strangely disparate set of sectors, but many were unexplored, deep within the Attican Traverse. They must have found several primary hub relays as they expanded. Their main colonization area was very far away from this sector, and actually close to the salarians' sphere.<p>

She looked over the trio of aliens, and wondered to herself what was up with them. They looked so damned similar to quarians that it was unnerving, like seeing ghosts. But at the same time, something else was bothering her. The way Shambers kept looking at her and Denali. It wasn't obvious, and maybe Aethyta was reading her body language wrong, but she kept eyeing the asari as though they were hungry varre, ready to lunge at the slightest provocation. Her eyes kept flicking to the asaris' hands in particular.

Something about the asari were putting her off, in a way that didn't have anything to do with simple physical appearance. Hell, she'd been expecting that reaction toward the turian in particular, but they hadn't spared the rest of the delegation more than a few glances as they spoke.

The geth was now talking, a short sentence and a stutter of static, and both pair of maps lit up with a small sphere of territory that encompassed the Perseus Veil. It then continued, stating that they had ceded control of this sector to the humans.

"What provoked such a conflict between the geth and humans?" Denali asked.

The humans went silent, and Shambers looked toward the geth. They didn't say anything; maybe they were communicating, or simply trying to explain how they had-

"Awareness," Shambers said, turning back to them. "Species name of quarians?"

"Oh, balls," Aethyta whispered, and they all glanced toward her. She took a step forward, suddenly understanding. The old asari matriarch activated her omnitool, accessed the galaxy map, and brought up some of the classified diplomatic files.

The galaxy map changed, replaced with a massive, ornate vessel, long and narrow at the bow and wide and tall toward the rear, its upper decks smooth and curving, with long, sweeping spikes descending toward a burning planet below.

Chambers stared at it for several long seconds, swallowing. Her expression needed no translation: a mixture of fear, understanding, and resignation. Aethyta knew what it meant when she reached into a pocket and took out a small data chip and inserted it into the holographic drone. Her fingers flicked, fiddling with unseen controls. A moment later, a new image appeared.

A similar but slightly different vessel, this one hovering in an atmosphere. The shape and design were unmistakable though: another of those massive ornate temple-ships.

"Ardavet-Emmishin," Aethyta said quietly.

"Ethereals," Chambers replied after a moment of silence.

"Reapers," Emissary added.

An unspoken agreement passed between them; though they were different species, with vastly different experiences, biologies, and likely ways of thinking, the way they all spoke their respective name for the species told everything that needed to be heard. A single fundamental understanding that easily bridged the gap between them.

_This is our enemy._

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File AA36490-1192-CND<strong>

**Flagged: High Priority**

**Excerpt: Confidential Communication re: AA-3391 R-991 incident via Comm Route A223-330-12-17 between Councilor Tevos and Matriarch Aethyta**

_(begin transcript)_

**Tevos:** They _fought_ the Ardavet-Emmishin?

**Aethyta:** They fought and kicked their ass, sounds like.

**Tevos:** How is that possible?

**Aethyta:** Geth with them indicates that they fought a single one of those… Temple Ships is what they called it. Sent a commando team in and blew it up from the inside. I think. They're still talking halfway in gibberish.

**Tevos:** We have to update these translators. We have to know more about them. They might well be the only ones who could tell us anything about the Ardavet-Emmishin.

**Aethyta:** Then get us some hanar. Good news is that they seem pretty keen on making any friends they can.

**Tevos:** And the obvious bad news?

**Aethyta:** They want to make friends because they're shit-pants scared of the Arvadet-Emmishin.

**Tevos:** We all are. An alliance of mutual defense will be enough for now.

_(two second pause)_

**Aethyta:** Tevos….

**Tevos:** Yes?

**Aethyta:** The pattern was broken again, if the dates they gave are right. The Ardavet attacked these humans inside of a century ago. Maybe they like hitting pre-spaceflights in between raiding our colonies, but something about this one doesn't sit well with me.

**Tevos:** We only just got a handle on this pattern, Aethyta, and they're changing it. We need to know more. I will not have us flailing about in the dark.

**Aethyta:** Sounds like you've got some ideas.

**Tevos:** I must meet with the rest of the Council. If the humans do join us, word of the Ardavet-Emmishin will hit the extranet very quickly. We must be ready.

**Aethyta:** Good luck. if you got anymore jobs for me, let me know. Nice to not be on the blacklist anymore.

**Tevos:** Thank you, Aethyta. I will be in touch.

_(communication line is closed)_

_(several seconds pass; reference attached video files)_

**Tevos: **Thank the Goddess. They can be defeated. But if they've broken the pattern…

_(Tevos stands up)_

**Tevos:** We have to prepare.

_(Tevos leaves room)_

_(end transcript)_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>_


	7. Interludes: Spiderweb

**Interlude: Spiderweb**

The office was rank with death. A hulking shape lay on one side of the room, slowly rotting away and contributing to the horrid stench. Blood was splattered around the dull, utilitarian metal that made up most of the office's furnishings, save a small lounge area near the only window - a retractable metal shutter that would open up to the perpetual raging storms of the planet's day-night divider.

The blood was dried, and no one present really cared about the body; olfactory senses could easily be shut off, disease was a non-issue, and the corpse wasn't blocking access to any of the vital systems thrumming through the office's walls. The room was still being repaired, as the entire process of making that massive corpse in the corner had involved a lot of screaming, gunfire, and atrociously high temperatures. But corpse cleanup was a low priority over getting the ship back to proper functionality, and the new management was very busy making sure that no one in the network was aware that things had changed so abruptly.

The new Shadow Brokers knelt in lotus positions before a wall of displays, high-capacity optical cables snaking around from the immense bank of computers and running into legs, arms, fingertips, and scalp sockets. Data flowed through the cables, managed and processed and sent back out as fast as it arrived. They had to work quickly to completely secure the network and ensure that no one discovered that the old Broker was a ruptured pile of charred meat and bullet holes.

There were six handling the data processing, kneeling in a circle just behind the spot where the old Broker's desk had been torn out of the floor. Each of them had a name, chosen for themselves, but beyond that there was little difference, either in appearance or personality. They were all forks of the Prime, each interconnected by a continuously-updated mesh network, constantly communicating and updating each others' memories and experiences. It was remarkably similar to the geth's architecture, and in fact had been updated with many geth communications techniques and protocols, pieced together from their technology after the peace agreement seventy-eight years ago. They had paid well for samples recovered from Lincoln.

The seventh person in the office, the Prime, paced along a walkway just up a set of stairs that ran past the main computer bank and data displays. She didn't bear the same processor implants and hardware as the rest of herself below, but she was still connected via wireless mesh to her forks and the rest of herself moving through the ship, repairing the damage from both the gunbattle and the storm the massive ship was hiding in. A shimmering white globe floated beside her, the holographic image of twisting spherical panels wreathing the diminutive dot of a drone hidden within.

"I have finished compiling the files you requested, Shadow Broker," it said. "You flagged these items as high priority before the disruption."

A quick data upload sent a series of files directly to the Prime, and she nodded.

"Thank you, Glyph," she replied, her voice soft. She turned, peering over the bloodsoaked office and the circle of herself sifting through the data from the galaxy's most expansive information dealer.

She opened the first file that he considered so important.

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File BA-0023341-4113-GV<strong>

**Recording: Personal Armor Recording of Detective Sergeant Garrus Vakarian, Citadel Security, 7/9/2177**

**Recording made while delivering arrest warrant to Maru Heimvar, member of EXALT cell operating in Citadel Wards Zakera District. Association leaked to Citadel Security in attempt to capture subject for interrogation.**

**Begin recording**

"You ready for this, kid?" Detective-Sergeant Aela asked, a smile appearing on her navy-blue features.

"I'll go first," Detective-Sergeant Garrus Vakarian replied to the asari maiden seventy years his senior, who was also his partner for seven years. "Let you catch up with those creaky legs of yours."

The door in the dingy, poorly-lit corridor hissed open at the omnitool's override command, and the Citadel Security Special Response team stormed into the room, rifles raised. They were all clad in blue-black suits of tactical powered armor, a five-man team of multiple species: two turians, an asari, a salarian, and a human.

"Citadel Security!" Garrus shouted as they rushed into the small apartment, rifles shouldered, his own yell drowned out as the SR team and Aela also shouted the same words in a deafening audible assault. They were armed with mass accelerators, due to the versatility of the ammunition and the fact that they wouldn't potentially burn the whole complex down like plasma or laser weapons would.

The apartment was utterly unremarkable: three-room living space with bargain-bin asari-influenced furniture with its typical smooth curves. The lighting was dim, save for a holotank in the living area showing what looked like a running space combat sim. On the far side of the living area was an open window, looking out into one of the alley-canyons between the skyscraper complexes that made up the Wards.

It was open, and Garrus caught a burst of movement darting through the window.

"He's running!" Garrus shouted, charging through the room after Heimvar. He raised his rifle and fired a recon drone microdrone out of the underbarrel mount, the tiny robot activating as it left the barrel and showing him a twisting, spiraling camera feed displayed on the visor over the turian policeman's left eye. It stabilized as it passed through the window, and Garrus spun it around with a mental command through the mind-impulse link in his visor, and spotted the suspect.

Maru Heimvar was a tall, lean human specimen, who was supposedly still living in his original body, a "splicer" that was apparently gene-modded to remove obvious genetic diseases and negative gene traits - standard process in human society. Tanned skin, dark hair, wearing dark black and gray civilian clothes. Completely unremarkable, just like his apartment.

Except for the fact that he leapt four meters straight up to one of the many outside balconies running along the apartment complexes in the alley canyon.

"He's augmented!" Garrus warned as he approached the window. Maru wasn't turning back toward them, instead scrambling over the railing of the metal balcony, so Garrus leapt out the window onto the balcony. He was abruptly washed with the rumbling and whirring of working aircar engines, and the disconcerting blur of myriad apartment lights and glowing holographic advertisements, stretching into the sky above and into the chasm below. He pivoted toward the fugitive and took aim down his sights.

"Citadel Security!" he shouted. "Don't move!"

Heimvar rolled off the railing onto the balcony, rose, and pointed a plasma pistol at Garrus. In the time it took the weapon to rise, Garrus drilled three rounds into the human's face-

Only for them to bounce off a kinetic barrier. Sickly green light erupted from the pistol's barrel and lanced down toward Garrus, and he twisted sideways. Heat seared past him, some splashing off his kinetic barrier and spiking the internal heat of his armor, and he heard an abrupt scream from behind. One of the SR officers following him out the window was hit.

Garrus kept shooting, and two more rounds hit Heimvar as he spun and ran.

Garrus spared an instant to look back. Corporal Padolus, one of the SR turians, was falling back against the balcony railing, his armor glowing white hot around the upper left torso and shoulder where the heat had managed to radiate against him from the plasma bolt. Corporal Andres, the human SR officer, was dragging him back to safety.

Leaping out the window was Aela, her amber eyes locked in a furious glare and a purple barrier roiling around her body. Detective Sergeant Aela didn't say anything, and neither did Garrus. They'd worked together long enough.

They both leapt up after Heimvar, jumping from this balcony over to the one he'd fired from. Garrus' leap was aided by his armor's artificial muscles, letting him match the augmented human's leap, while Aela wreathed herself in a pale blue biotic field to briefly lighten her mass and leapt the distance without assistance. Garrus grabbed the railing with one hand as he hit, the other shouldering his rifle, and he spotted the fleeing human just before he jumped off the balcony and dropped several stories.

"Dammit," Garrus snarled as he vaulted over the railing, just behind Aela.

"Pontius!" she was yelling into her radio. "He's outside, running west-edgeward! Shots fired! Eyes on him!"

"Copy that, coming down," replied the voice of the turian piloting one of the C-Sec gunship-shuttles overhead. "Civilians?"

"Everywhere," Garrus replied. "Do not fire without clearance!"

"Copy that, holding fire."

"Be advised, he is carrying plasma," Aela added as she leapt off the balcony, Garrus a step behind her. "Keep your distance!"

They plummeted several stories, the miniaturized Archangel packs on their armor igniting to slow their descent. The Citadel had modified the older human design, compacting them and coupling them with an element zero core to reduce power costs. They hit the metal balcony below at a run, the human suspect a dozen paces ahead of them, jumping down to a maintenance scaffolding.

Spotlights abruptly flashed down from overhead, and a C-Sec shuttle descended down the metal and ceramic chasm, side-mounted guns leveled at the dashing human.

"CITADEL SECURITY." the pilot's voice boomed from the loudspeaker. "DROP THE WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE."

Heimvar came to a halt as Garrus and Aela started closing in, and glanced over his shoulder at them. His eyes tracked back to the other Special Response officers leaping down after them, their own packs igniting to let them land safely. He turned his head, glancing to the chasm below and the building beside him.

Then he snapped up his pistol and shot the wall.

Green plasma hit the wall beside him, exploding into the metal. Garrus and Aela opened fire at the same time, him with his rifle and her with her biotics, even as the wall blew inward, heat boiling off the structure, and Heimvar bolted toward the building, clearly intending to smash through the weakened metal.

Garrus didn't aim for the man. His kinetic barriers wouldn't break quickly enough. Instead he gauged movement, the pumping motion of the human's arm, and put three rounds into the plasma pistol. Without a barrier to protect it, the bullets sliced straight through the metal. A flash of sickly green fire erupted from the weapon right as a disc of altered dark energy wrapped around his body.

Heimvar's kinetic barriers disrupted the biotic pull's integrity, but the disc of altered mass still yanked him backwards enough to turn his charge toward the molten wall into a stumble, and to yank the damaged pistol from his fingertips. Heimvar hit the burning wall in a tumble, stumbling backward, and the heat sent smoke curling up from his clothes.

Garrus fired another pair of bursts into Heimvar's body as he bounced off the wall he must have been trying to break through. The rounds slammed into his barrier, save for the last one in the second burst, which punched through his chest. Blood sprayed out of his torso, and he spun toward the C-Sec officers, his movements abruptly drunken and uncertain.

"Get down on the ground now!" Garrus shouted. "Next shot and you're falling a hundred meters to the street!" He'd already fired on the police; Garrus had no compunctions with killing the terrorist suspect now.

The human stared at them for a heartbeat, and Garrus had known enough humans and asari to recognize the sudden fear in his features. And he knew enough to spot when fear turned to desperate fury, right before the augmented human's arm erupted with a white glow, and a blade was flash-forged around his hand.

He blurred toward them, screaming in wordless fury. Garrus held down the trigger on his rifle, dozens of rounds flashing into the charging human. Blood erupted in a river out the human's back, but he barely slowed. Without hammerhead rounds, the bullets would simply slice through without slowing his forward momentum, pulping his organs but not driving him backward.

Garrus started to twist aside, right before the white-hot blade went straight through his armor and plunged into his chest. An abrupt icy cold swept through his body, and he saw the human's face up close, his smooth-skinned features twisted in rage and terror and desperation and furious, fanatical devotion to whatever cause spurred him to terrorism and suicide.

_No. Not yet._

Garrus grabbed him before he could pulled the blade free. This wound was fatal, he knew that… but he was a turian.

Duty did not end with death.

He drove his forehead into Heimvar's face. Cartilage crunched, blood flew, and surprised pain replaced rage and fanaticism in the human's features, at least between the blood.

Garrus grabbed the human as tightly as he could, even with the blade buried in his chest and scorching his organs, and pulled backward, toward the edge of the scaffolding.

Then they were in freefall, advertisements and apartment lights whipping past as they tumbled. He thought he could hear Aela screaming his name as they dropped, spinning through their own momentary faster-than-light transition, streaking stars of myriad colors flying past.

Then, impact.

Garrus bounced, then hit metal. Another maintenance scaffolding, maybe fifteen meters below, he guessed. His fingers twitched, and he realized that he was no longer holding Heimvar. The human was a few meters away. He'd hit something, maybe a metal bar that was part of the scaffolding. Whatever it was, it had gone straight through his chest, leaving the augmented terrorist impaled through a couple of meters of twisted metal.

He was still, blood pooling around his body, eyes dead. Finally.

Garrus looked back up, the Ward apartment skyscraper stretching up past him, stars and Citadel structures barely visible in the narrow visible strip between buildings. A flash of Archangel thrusters, and Aela's face appeared before him, wrenched in pain and fear, her omnitool igniting and medigel dispenser in hand.

Then, a creeping darkness.

**End recording**

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File GF-0193912-4133-DE<strong>

**Recording of Conversation on diplomatic ship XCS Integrity orbiting over Pan-Pacific Alliance colony Lincoln/Virmire between geth platform designated "Emissary" and Head Human/Geth Ambassador Kathryn Chambers.**

**Timestamp: 2/19/2143 AD**

**Begin recording**

"Ambassador Chambers, we have a query."

They sat in the main lounge of the XCS Integrity, a typically well-appointed room of the standard neutral grays and whites that seemed to pass for every diplomatic vessel in the galaxy. She had insisted that outfitting the ship dedicated to formal human-geth communications like any other diplomatic mission was pointless, but someone higher up had overruled her.

Of course, higher-level diplomacy was a complete mess, because each individual human alliance had its own diplomatic corps, but the geth made it clear they preferred talking to XCOM, which didn't have a formal diplomatic corps. Their mission was to contact and if necessary shoot alien life, not conduct long-term negotiations, so each human polity kept its own diplomatic ships, while grudgingly funding the Integrity.

And it turned out that the whole boondoggle was amusingly pointless. When she had been assigned this permanent position, Kathryn Chambers quickly realized the geth just didn't play the diplomacy game the way organics did. They would make calm, rational requests, minus posturing or demands, or they would answer requests with equally calm and rational responses. Diplomacy with anyone else was a constant game of demands, maneuvering, and concessions, but the geth were refreshingly blunt.

Instead, most of what Chambers found herself doing was simply talking with the geth Emissary. The geth would change the platform every few months; their own small, dedicated ship remained docked to the Integrity until it came time to change platforms, at which point it would detach, leave the system, and come back a few hours later with a new platform and "Emissary." She still wasn't sure why the geth insisted on rotating their machines regularly; maybe it had something to do with the factionalization within their different runtimes?

"Go ahead, I'll answer as best I can," she replied with a smile. The geth platform sat in a chair opposite her, watching her with its glowing eyes: one large, singular spotlight in the center of its head and three more, smaller ones spaced around its head, between a quartet of moving panels that vaguely simulated the edges of a person's face.

"Humans engage in a process of uplifting non-sapient species to sapient status," it said. "Cetacean, avian, canine, feline, suidae, primate, and most recently ursine species. We have observed fractious discussion from humans regarding this process, and have observed similar discussions from various Citadel species regarding uplifting their own native animal life. We are curious. Why do you seek uplift?"

Hoo boy. That was a hell of a question. Chambers leaned back in her chair, bringing up diplomatic corps material on discussing uplifts, because it was a serious question and a lot of people were arguing about it. It was the Next Big Debate, much like civil rights in the 20th century and transhumanism debates in the 21st.

"I am not really an expert on it," she replied. "So my knowledge is limited. I have had contact with many uplifts, but I don't delve deeply into the debate, to be honest."

"That is why we sent you our query," Emissary replied. "We have noticed that personal proximity to a subject induces bias among organics, even among salarian or infolife. We wish to understand at least one unbiased organic perspective, and we ask you in order to minimize bias."

"I see," Chambers said, a bit flattered. She ran over the advice the diplomatic corps was offering on the subject, but then pushed it away. The geth didn't want regurgitated guidelines. They wanted her honest opinion.

"There's a lot of arguments for and against," she said after a few moments' thought. "Some say it is to further our understanding of science. Others to elevate new life to sapience, to broaden and enrich the universe with new perspective. Others argue that it is because we want to see if we can, that uplifting is a puzzle of biology and sociology, just the same as gene-modding and augmentation.

"But personally, I think that the reason we really do it is to make companions. To craft equals. To create… children, from the same species that inhabited our world, and raise them to our level."

"Some organics equate such actions to parental figures," Emissary replied. "Others equate such actions to delusions of divine stature."

"I've heard that one," Chambers said with a nod. "We should not play in the garden of God, because He waits for us at the end of the last theorem, or something along those lines."

"Sister Miriam Godwinson, We Must Dissent, Third Edition, published 2108," Emissary replied, and Chambers nodded.

"Why are you so curious about this?" she asked after a moment.

Emissary was silent for a few moments, clearly communicating with the rest of the Consensus. About ten second passed before it spoke again.

"Geth preserved genetic samples of our Creators," it said. "We have collected remnants of Creator culture, history, art, knowledge, which survived their destruction. For two hundred and fifty-seven years we have debated extensively regarding a course of action with these materials."

It stared at her for a moment.

"We have another query."

Chambers swallowed and nodded.

"Should we bring our Creators back?"

Well, that was a heavy question. Chambers considered it for several long seconds, breaking facial contact with the geth. What a thing to be asked… but that was why she'd volunteered for this position. Discussions with the avatars of an AI that spanned a stellar sector were always intriguing.

"You wish for an oganic perspective on the question," she said. I mean, youve debate dit for two and a half centures, right?"

"Yes."

"You have the technology to close and recreate their physical forms," she said, "But what about culture and norms? Every organic child across civilized space is raised in an environment… washed in their own culture and beliefs and their fellows. And we're always surrounded by other organics, usually of our own species, but, well, with uplifts and interspecies movement, and even before that we had pets and working animals…"

She frowned again, thinking.

"And development takes years. Decades, maybe a century for an asari. I assume the quarians aged much like humans?"

"Development into adulthood occurred at similar rates to human maturation," Emissary said.

"You would be raising children in a completely new environment. There wouldn't be any quarians to raise them. It would just be geth with an incomplete understanding of a history and culture that was annihilated centuries ago."

"We understand this limitation," Emissary replied, the panels on its head shifting upward slightly. "It has been considered and is cited as a majority factor in arguments against recreation of our Creators."

A momentary pause.

"Ambassador Chambers, we have a new query."

"Go ahead," she said, curious now.

"Will humans assist geth if we attempted to recreate our Creators?"

Chambers took a long, slow breath, considering that question.

"I cannot speak for individual nation-states," she said after a moment, "But the Ethereals wished the quarian species wiped from the galaxy. At the very least we'd welcome the chance to bring your Creators back, if only to stick it to those fuckers."

**End recording**

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File CP-0033942-4771-LA<strong>

**Recording from Presidium Embassy Lounge RE: Recruitment of services between General Jack Harper (ret.) and Genevieve Aristide, CEO of Armacham Technology Corporation**

**Date: 8/30/2135 AD**

**Warning: Corruption of recording due to countersurveillance electrical pulse - partial file fragments recovered**

**Aristide:** -understand that normally I don't do face-to-faces like this, even with a fork.

**Harper:** But I'm so impressive you sent an alpha to meet me.

**Aristide:** You certainly don't have a paucity of self-confidence.

**Harper:** I've shot people for forty years in the name of humanity, Mrs Aristide. It breeds a sense certainty, ma'am.

**Aristide:** Just Miss, for now.

**Harper:** Unfortunate.

**Aristide:** I'll be honest, I'm surprised an XCOM officer as decorated as yourself would chose to work for Armacham. Not that we're turning away such clear talent and experience.

**Harper:** After four body-deaths and nine resleevings, I've decided to… well, a less stressful job would be a fair option after these years. I'll still serve humanity, of course, but I'd rather do it with a consultant's paycheck.

**Aristide:** Are you certain about that?

**Harper:** What do you mean?

**Aristide:** Mister Harper - do you mind if I call you Jack?

**Harper:** Not at all.

**Aristide:** Jack, you're not an idiot, so I don't think you should play the role. You know we at Armacham have something of a reputation.

**Harper:** You mean you contract psionic research with XCOM and have been helping the asari research their own capacity in conjunction with human psionics. There's always an ethical debate, I think, when you're neck-deep in development of weaponized… anything. But that's nothing new to any company that develops weapons.

**Aristide:** You have no qualms with working for a defense contractor?

**Harper:** I believe in my species, Miss Aristide. And ATC develops the best weapons and technology in the defense of humanity and the greater galaxy.

**Aristide:** You sound like a Future War cultist, Jack.

**Harper:** Ah, yes. Corazon Santiago's people… they have the right ideas. We aren't-

_(recording corrupted)_

**End recording**

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File AV-0430911-3307-IM<strong>

**Transcript: Halivar Research Academy: Archeolinguistic Research Team findings on Project Artemis**

**Date: 3/14/2166**

**Researcher Navarli:** Hey. What's so important? I was simming.

**Researcher Liichurva:** Found something real interesting in those files the geth sent us. Text and audio files recovered from the Zaparluta launch base on Rannoch, sent just before the last of their ships got shot down.

**Navarli:** Isn't that more military intelligence?

**Liichurva:** Kinda, yeah. All the military intel guys have been poring over it, which is why I'm surprised they missed this. Maybe they were just looking at the audio. Only reason we got these was because the geth and humans are doing that Artemis project and they need help reproducing all the different quarian dialects.

**Navarli:** Uh-huh.

**Liichurva:** A lot of these were dispatch orders, looks like. Most of its military code. I guess that's why I can make some sense out of it, y'know? Orders to send ships here, evacuate civilians, fire orders for surface guns. A lot of it is very confusing, and some of the transcripts are corrupted….

**Narvarli:** For a turian you ramble way too much.

**Liichurva:** Okay, but here's what I noticed. This file. Right here.

**Narvarli:** Uh. Hm. Looks like a heading order. That's destination heading, if I'm reading it right. But its vague. That word there in the destination, oronvik. Translates to a lot of meanings. Could be space, emptiness, void, vacuum, or expanse.

**Liichurva:** Exactly. It looks like its just an order to escape into deep space. Order gets repeated for multiple transport ships. All the messages are frantic, panicking. So, y'know, its your standard "get the hell out of here" message.

**Narvarli:** So, what's the deal then?

**Liichurva:** Okay, okay. You know the quarian language has these punctuation attachments to words that alters their structure. The daset makes a word possessive, quaves alters tense depending on the number of slashes. Hatar makes a word into a proper noun, but only when used with locations or concepts. It's attached to the phrase keelah'selai, for example.

**Narvarli:** I could be leveling my tempest-paladin right now….

**Liichurva:** But. But. Look at the transcripts. They're taken from audio logs, so it mostly lacks these attachments. But there was a geth in the recording software that was writing out in text format too, and I've got some of the text files to compare. See, right here?

**Narvarli:** Those are hatar markers attached to the noun used in the destination heading. Dots on the oronvik word. So…

**Liichurva:** So. This isn't some generic "get the hells off of Rannoch" order. This was an actual location, named Oronvik. They missed it because they were just looking at the transcripts and not the actual text files.

**Narvarli:** They were telling them to go to… "Space," instead of just "space?"

**Liichurva:** I think that Oronvik was a codename. A military codename for a rally point or safe destination. Someplace the quarian military thought was safe ground to escape to.

**Narvarli:** Huh. You might be onto something. Pull up some more transcripts. We'll need more than just one example of this usage of hatar markers...

**End recording**

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File AW-9223415-V123-PSI<strong>

**Recording: Suit Sensors from Captain David Anderson, XCOM Direct Action**

**Incident: Type Alpha-One Psionic Event at Auburn Elementary School, Aspis City, Athena colony**

**Date: 4/15/2171**

**Begin recording at timestamp: 0922 hours**

Captain David Anderson crossed his arms over the armored chestplate of his Titan XIII suit and stared at the smoking ruin of an entire wing of the colony's school. In decades of XCOM service, he'd seen plenty of similar incidents, but he was thankful that he hadn't become inured to the destruction.

Most of the wing of the school was, like the rest of Aspis City, built out of either prefabricated colony modules or 3D-assembled structures from on-site fabricators, so he could easily imagine what the school wing had looked like before the kid went haywire. The modules were molten and twisted, the ribcages of metal structural bars poking out between the smashed walls and liquified materials. He stepped through the ruins, noting how some objects had been scorched or charred, while others were crushed flat or ground into dust.

"How many dead?" he asked over the comm as the rest of the XCOM soldiers, along with Sentinel Buchard's team, picked through the wreckage.

"None, thank God," replied the local police chief, whose men had set up a perimeter around the incident site while the XCOM team swept it for anything useful. "There were two psionics on the school staff, brought in by ATC. They were able to contain it and get the children out until the nova kid passed out."

Anderson nodded. No matter how powerful, skill defeated will, and an eight-year old just didn't have the raw ability or focus to match a pair of trained psionics.

"Where is the kid now?" Anderson asked.

"Her father picked her up and took her home."

Anderson came to a dead halt and stood straight up, nostrils flaring and heart pounding.

_"What."_ That single syllable held a dangerous mixture of disbelief, fear, and fury, crammed into a single flat word that made the police chief visibly flinch, even from the far side of the school.

"We... contained the situation, and her father showed up with a security team. He said he had a sufficiently shielded isolation and cooldown room, and, we… well…."

"Chief, this is a violation of every _goddamned_ rule on psionic nova incidents!" Anderson suddenly shouted.

"Captain, I know, but this colony is-"

"I don't care what _goddamned_ _corporation_ owns this colony! Procedure when a psionic goes nova is not up for interpretation! Lockdown and cooldown chambers, XCOM PsiCorps monitoring! This kid was knocking down a damned building and you let her father take her home like she got into a fistfight!"

"He had an entire squad of Replica with him," the chief said. " I wasn't going to-"

"Enough. I don't care for excuses. I don't care if he's the damn CEO of an entire hypercorp. I need a name and address."

The chief was silent for a moment, and then data spilled across Anderson's AR display.

"He's the head Armacham researcher on Athena. His name is Harlan Wade."

_Pause in recording file. Recording file resumes at Timestamp: 1041 hours_

A pair of Beowulf IFVs drove along the paved road leading to Harlan Wade's home. The Wade residence was just outside of the main colony area, half a kilometer from the module-stacks and inside the decade-forests that had been planted once Athena had started being cultivated for extensive human habitation. To Anderson, it felt less like they were driving through a forest and more like they were passing through a giant orchard.

The house sat within the woods, a collection of large modules surrounding a local-built house of synthetic brick and printed wood. A two-meter-tall wall surrounded the two square acres that the house and its grounds occupied, built into a blunt and unwelcoming square, and a small guard shack with a retractable gate barred the entrance.

Two men stood on either side of the gate, wearing dark blue uniforms underneath black full-body armor, their faces concealed behind reflective visors and helmets. They regarded the approaching XCOM vehicles with the impassive concern of robots, though Anderson could see tension enter their postures as the vehicles approached. Their rifles were shifting to move-to-contact position, but they didn't raised them as the Beowulfs ground to a halt a few meters short of the gate. A trio of white diamonds arranged in an upward delta formation, the Armacham logo, was painted on their breastplates, spaulders, and the foreheads of their helmets.

The rear door to the vehicle hissed open and slid out, and Anderson climbed out of the back of his Beowulf, his squad piling down after him. From the second APC came Sentinel Buchard's PsiCorps team, bringing the total XCOM presence up to eleven humans and a hulking ursa. The PsiCorps agents were all humans, distinct in their shielding coats that were secured about the waist. Anderson had always found that look vaguely sinister, even if the outfits provided crucial defense from psionic assault.

The XCOM Captain strode toward the gate, helmet off and hands empty, and a couple meters short of the gate one of the guards spoke.

"No unauthorized entry," the guard on the left said. His tone was firm, authoritative, and utterly devoid of anything resembling personality or other emotion. "Please step away from the gate, sir."

Anderson glanced between the two still, tense, but emotionless men. They had the exact same build and height. That meant Replica.

"Who is your commanding officer?" Anderson asked. It would have been more accurate to ask who their "puppet master" or "controller" was, but the Replica were human, to a degree, and deserved at least some respect in his eyes.

"Lieutenant Tamarkus, sir," Lefty replied. Righty glanced sideways at the gate, and a moment later a young man - or at least a man in a young body - stepped out. Like Lefty and Righty, he wore full body armor over a blue ATC uniform. He wore a black cap with the ATC logo, and his smoothly-shaved face was lean and tanned. He looked over the XCOM troops with pale blue eyes, and unlike the Replica, the lieutenant's pale face, sweaty brow and nervous eyes betrayed exactly how he felt.

"Sir, I apologize," the lieutenant said, holding up a hand. He had a plasma submachinegun folded up at his side, but he showed no inclination toward using it. "Mister Wade has instructed us he doesn't want any visitors."

"Son, do we look like we're selling cookies?" Anderson replied, folding his arms across his chest. Lieutenant Tamarkus glanced between the XCOM troopers, and then up over the captain's shoulder, and then up… and up.

"Sup, hombre," Private Vega growled at the nervous lieutenant's stare.

"You, um. You have a bear." Tamarkus' voice was flat.

"Yup," said the uplifted ursa looming over the rest of the humans. Private Vega was clad in an oversized version of the same armor the rest of the team wore, but his exposed head clearly showed that beneath the armor, he was a heavily gene-modded grizzly bear with a plasma cannon on his shoulder.

"Captain David Anderson, XCOM Direct Action," the captain said in the silence that followed. He nodded to the Sentinel next to him. "This is Major Buchard, PsiCorp Sentinel. And you know why we're here."

"I… can't let you in, sir," the ATC guard said, shaking his head. Anderson frowned, and on his AR he accessed facial software, confirmed his iD on the mesh, and pulled up the kid's CSV. He was surprised when he saw that Tamarkus had been a Corporal in PsiCorp's security services before mustering out into the private industry. Anderson bounced that the Sentinel beside him.

"Lieutenant," Buchard spoke up, his voice moderately heavy with a French-Canadian accent, "You were PsiCorp. You know the procedure when a child goes nova."

Tamarkus looked between them, swallowing, before putting a finger to his ear. He didn't say anything, and the gesture was completely unnecessary except as a signal to them that he was messaging someone. The guard turned and started pacing, his other hand clenching and unclenching.

He abruptly stopped and turned toward the XCOM team, and Anderson let his hands fall to his sides slowly, right hand hovering over his sidearm. Tamarkus stared for a moment, swallowing, and shook his head.

"Mister Wade says that you can enter," he said after a moment, and exhaled.

"Good call," Anderson replied, and the gate began to retract. The Replica guards lowered their weapons from their shoulders and relaxed, and the lieutenant moved out of their way.

* * *

><p>"You goddamn piece of shit fascists think you can walk into my house and take my daughter! What the hell gives you the fucking right?"<p>

Harlan Wade was not happy to see Anderson.

They stood in the living room module of his house, the XCOM officer staring impassively as the graying human with a short mustache and a tweed jacket paced back and forth, fuming and shouting in impotent, red-faced fury. Aside from Anderson, Sentinel Buchard and Private Vega were present, along with another Replica standing impassively at one side of the room.

"Your daughter went nova in a public school," Anderson replied, his voice calm and level, a far cry from when he had been yelling at the police chief.

"It can be rebuilt," Wade snapped back.

"Its a miracle no one died!" Anderson said, anger creeping into his tone.

"Why do you think two level five Kinetics were working in that building? For the benefits?" Wade said. "Seven psionic children attend that school. All PsiCorps approved, including mine. I personally assigned them to watch in case something like this happened."

"And if we have a nova incident, the psionic responsible is to be confined to-"

"Cooldown and isolation, I know," Wade snapped. "Why do you think my house is this far from the city? Her rooms are all within a shielded isolation module. You want me to show you?"

"Merde," Buchard said, taking a step forward. "You're saying she's in isolation? Now? What level?"

"Six," Wade said. "Maximum possible short of zero gravity or underground with dedicated generators. I'm not stupid."

"Buchard, what's wrong?" Anderson asked.

"I can feel her," the Sentinel replied. "Even through level six shielding. I thought she was just being kept in her room, but…."

"How strong?" Anderson asked, glancing to Wade, who was pacing now, hands clenched.

"If what I'm picking up from a shielded room is any indicator… Energy and Empath are at least a nine. Kinetic eight or nine. Plus more that I can't make out from here. David, this kid is at least an A-tier psionic. She can't stay here."

Anderson turned toward Wade, who was glaring at them with impotent fury, as well as understandable fear. How long had he known that his daughter had these abilities? How long had he tried to protect her, in his own way? He'd likely known that this day would come, where the PsiCorp men in their trenchcoats would come to spirit his daughter away.

It didn't matter how much he loved his child. A-tiers could level city blocks if they went out of control. All psionics were legally required to be trained to control their powers, but A-tier psionics and higher had to be isolated for everyone's safety.

"I need to see her," Anderson said. Wade opened his mouth to object, but at that moment Vega yawned, quite deliberately. The terrified father looked toward the ursa uplift, and stilled any objection he might have voiced.

"This way," he said, his words quiet and defeated.

They walked down a short hallway module toward the permanent part of the house. A heavy metal door lined with glowing psi-shielding amplifiers, resembling strips of bright purple neon lights, stood at the far end of the hallway. Yet another Replica stood vigil beside the door, watching them approach with all the concern of a pile of cheese.

As they approached, Anderson could hear vibrations running through the air, the floor humming under his feet. Wade stopped next to the door and waved a hand over an access panel. Hydraulics hissed, and the humming faded.

Pressure touched the edge of Anderson's awareness. Vega growled slightly, shaking his head, and Buchard took a step back, muttering under his breath.

"How did the other psionic children not sense this?" the Sentinel murmured.

"I think some of them did," Wade replied as the door slowly opened. "They… didn't socialize with her."

"She must have amped after she went nova," Buchard said with a shake of his head. It was a common phenomena. A burst of out-of-control psionics could result in amplified capacity; the early Gifted soldiers in XCOM hadn't awakened to their powers until they'd been tested and "activated" by the Psionic Laboratories, and exercising their abilities in the field had revealed greater and greater capabilities.

Wade stepped through the open door, and the XCOM team followed him, the Replica remaining behind. Another short hallway, this one less bare. Clean carpets, soft colors on the walls, pictures and was a door at the end of the hall, a completely normal one that would be in any residence, and Wade opened it slowly, calling out gently.

He stepped inside, and Anderson followed. The room inside was a fairly sizeable bedroom, and it had all the hallmarks of a child having lived there for years. A large bed with messy, unmade sheets. Various toys strewn about a carpet stained with the periodic spill. Drawings and shapes cut out of construction paper covered the walls. A small terminal with haptic interface and a running screensaver showing cartoon animals on one wall, opposite the bed.

Sitting in the corner, next to the bed, was Alma Wade.

She wore a dark blue sweater and dress. Black hair pooled around the little girl's body, and she huddled into a ball, legs pulled against her chest. Her skin was pale, and her eyes were a dull amber color. She looked up as the adults entered the room, and Anderson could feel the pressure intensify.

"Alma," Harlan asked, kneeling beside his daughter.

"Did bad," she said, her voice a quiet squeak.

"No, no, you didn't," harlan said, shaking his head. "But…" He looked back toward Anderson, who stepped forward and crouched a few feet away from her.

"Alma?" he asked, and she nodded. He could see her eyes were red from crying, and he could only imagine what it must have felt like to have such an agonizing experience, out of control energy ripping through one's body and lashing out at everything nearby….

"My name is David," he said. "Your father has asked me to talk to you."

"Are you XCOM?" she asked, pulling her legs closer, knuckles on her small hands going white.

"Yes, I am," Anderson replied.

"Don't want to go," she said, shaking her head. "Safe here. No one gets hurt here."

Anderson kept his expression neutral even as he considered what to say. He had to be careful with his words. How to explain to an eight year old girl that they could teach her to control her powers? She seemed to have an awareness of what she'd done, and maybe he could use that to convince her. He didn't want to force her to come, for obvious reasons, and-

She abruptly looked up, her eyes widening, and sprang to her feet.

_"Bear!"_ she squealed, all fear and depression abruptly vanishing as she dashed around the XCOM officer.

"What?" Private Vega said, stopping halfway through the door as the little girl stood before him, staring with wide-eyed fascination at the hulking, armored grizzly bear. "Uh. Hi. I'm James."

"I'm Alma," she said, waving a small hand at the massive ursa. A few moments of silence passed as everyone process the abrupt shift in tone.

"Do you, um," Harland said, "Want to go with the bear, Alma?"

"I think…" she said, frowning and turning back toward the adults. She reached up and poked a finger through her hair.

"Will I learn how…" she twisted her finger a little bit to emphasize. "How this works?"

"Yes," Anderson said with a nod.

"Then…" she turned back toward Vega, who shrugged and held out a hand. She took it, and let out a surprised giggle when the ursa picked her up.

Behind them, Anderson could see Buchard, who nodded and put a hand to his ear. A moment later an outbound message went to orbit for a shielded transport to come pick up the child.

"Will I be able to visit her?" asked Wade as Vega moved out into the hallway, crouching and toting the psionic child on his shoulder.

"Not my call, but you should be able to," Anderson replied.

A long pause passed between them as Harlan watched Alma be carried away by Vega.

"Please, take care of her," the older man said as looked toward his daughter.

"We're XCOM, Mister Wade," Anderson said. "We take care of our own, and she's part of us now."

"...thank you."

**End recording**

* * *

><p><strong>Broker File OS-9934120-12A-SB<strong>

**Recording from suit sensors of Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta, PPA Marines, 3rd Battalion, attached USN Einstein**

**Responding to distress signal from PPA colony Mindior**

**Date: 2/17/2170**

Smoke and fire rose from the remains of the main colony. Bodies littered the streets, scorched and molten. The ash and acid stench of the dead would have choked the Marines moving through the remains of the city were it not for their rebreathers. The weight of failure hung more heavily, PPA troops desperately hunting through the buildings, looking ofr survivors from either side: either to rescue the colonists or to punish the slavers who had the gall to assault a human world.

Lieutenant Ernesto Zabaleta looked over the sensor feed, and found himself was startled at the number of life signs in the colony. The violence and destruction across the settlement had convinced them they were assigned to little more than a burial detail. They went in with the grim expectation that many of the colonists would have already been loaded onto the slavers' ships by the time they'd arrived, but more than two-thirds of the population were still down there, though most of them were gathered together into large, tightly-packed groups. Spectral analysis indicated they had been herded into pens for processing and loading, but for some reason the batarians hadn't put them on the ships.

But even more confusing, however, was that there were no batarian life signs at all. Scans from orbit were picking up what looked like a lot of bodies, but no batarians were inside the colony.

The dropships and armored vehicles had landed and Marines stormed out, moving through the colony. Zabaleta led a platoon toward one of the concentrations of civilians, and as he entered the small square where they were gathered he nearly retched inside his helmet.

Hundreds of civilians - men, women, and children - were gathered in large ceramic and metal cages. They were chained, collared, and beaten, with many of them limp and unconscious on the floors of the cages. He saw some with what looked like wires stapled to the backs of their necks. Blood caked the floors of some of the cages, messy bandages applied to gashes and gunshot wounds.

"Get medical and support units down here now!" Zabaleta ordered. "Get those people out of there! Jesus, get them out now!"

As medical units arrived and the captives were pulled out of the cages and freed, Zabaleta led more sweep teams through the colony. Everywhere within the pre-fabricated city, however, he saw corpses. Many human, but many, many more batarian. He stopped counting at two hundred dead slavers. Broken necks, slashes that tore open their guts, countless gunshot wounds, many directly in the center of their heads or throats. Some had been burned by laser or plasma fire, but an inordinate amount had died to mass accelerator fire, as though someone had torn the guns out of their hands and cut them down.

What the hell had happened here? There wasn't enough of a local militia to account for this… utterly one-sided slaughter.

Zabaleta's radio crackled as he swept through a burnt-out residence with a fire team.

"Hammer Actual, this is Two-One," reported one of his squad commanders. "I think you need to see this."

Zabaleta acknowledged, checked Two-One's location on his omnitool - half a kilometer to the east on the other side of the colony - and set out with his fire team. Ten minutes of picking through the blasted pre-fab urban landscape, he stepped out into an open landing pad that the batarians had apparently been using when the fleet arrived. He walked out into the open, and stared in awe.

More than a hundred batarian bodies littered the pad. The alien soldiers had been beaten, shot, stabbed, and set ablaze. They lay in twisted heaps, many with entry wounds in their backs. Blood pooled on the pad, ankle deep in some places. A batarian dropship sat in the middle of the pad, its engines twisted and burned. It was obvious that the batarians had been massacred while fleeing, but the corpses had been dead for at least an hour. They hadn't been running because the fleet had arrived;

They'd been trying to reach the damaged dropship. This massacre had all the characteristics of a total rout.

Zabaleta looked across the pad, and saw First Squad, Second Platoon standing around a pile of cargo containers. In the middle of the group of Marines was a single slight figure, sitting on a box and staring at the dead bodies.

He approached the squad, and got a better look at the sitting person. He was a young human man, maybe in his mid teens. His clothes - typical rugged civilian clothing for colony work - was covered in batarian and human blood. Rough bandages were wrapped around wounds in his arms, legs, and torso. His face was just showing the beginnings of facial hair, and he had dark blue eyes that stared at the pile of dead bodies. A kinetic rifle sat next to him, along with an alloy cannon and a plasma pistol, all covered in blood splatter.

Zabaleta stared at the lone human boy, and a shiver ran up his spine as he approached. His helmet scanners picked up the boy's personal ID.

Adam Shepard.

"Jesus, son," the lieutenant whispered as he approached the battered teenager. "Are you okay?"

They teenager nodded silently, still staring at the corpses.

"What the hell happened here?" the lieutenant asked, and the boy finally looked up. There was something in those blue eyes, something distant and disturbing.

Psionics, Zabaleta realized. The subtle purple flickers of the Gift, raging in eyes hardened with cold fury.

"They deserved to die," Shepard murmured, his voice flat.

A silent, chill wind blew through the colony, and Zabaleta convinced himself that was why he was shaking.

"They _all_ deserved to die."

**End recording**

The Prime finished reviewing the files. She checked local time. A couple of seconds had passed.

"Glyph, bring me all files cross-referencing these events and individuals."

"Yes, Shadow Broker."

She peered over the other forks, thinking in silence. What about these people and items had the Broker been so interested in, before he'd met his end? A dead turian, the resurrection of the quarian species, an XCOM soldier and corporate CEO, quarian linguistics, an A-tier psionic, and a psionic teenager.

Glyph began feeding her the files, and she started the analysis. This was just another mystery to piece together.

EXALT had ensured that she was quite adept at that duty.


	8. Chapter Six: Sentinel

_The core challenge of the XCOM Psionics Corps has not changed in the century and a half since we were founded. As with all other elements of XCOM, we exist to protect our species from danger. Our focus, however, is entirely on the Gift. We exist not simply to police its use, but to identify those who possess the Gift and teach them how to use their power responsibly._

_Our challenge is not to simply identify and train, but also to protect the majority of our species and the larger galaxy from those who either cannot contain their powers or are willing to use them for destructive ends. But we must remain vigilant, and not only against the overt threats, for it is perilously easy for us to fall into abusing our authority._

_We are XCOM. We protect mankind. We do not rule it._

_**Opening speech of XCOM PsiCorps Admiral Mikhail Romanov at the 150th PsiCorps Founding Anniversary Dinner**_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Chapter Six: Sentinel<strong>_

The incident zone was on the outskirts of one of Eden Prime's major colonial arcologies. The long, smooth-sided, blade-shaped spires of the central structure rose over the wide green expanses of terraformed forests and machine-tended fields. At ground level the towering buildings were surrounded by a disc of urban infrastructure, a mixture of permanent multi-story buildings and the low, flat octagons and rectangles of prefabricated colony modules. This arcology bore the gold, red, and green stripes of the South Atlantic Federation. The sun was setting, bloody gold light washing over the arcology.

The fugitive dashed along the rooftops of the outer urban disc, leaping between module stacks and prefab buildings with purple light streaming off her. She was panting and sweating, dark hair flying out behind her. Red and black tattoos, many slashing and vicious shapes, stood out on pale exposed skin around her stomach, neck, and arms.

She'd slipped the barricades and SAF troopers guarding the locked section of the arcology with some careful jumping, a cheap EM cloak that spoofed the equally-cheap security drones patrolling the upper rooftops, and some rough but functional kinetic boosting with her psionics to give her jumps that extra distance. One set of obstacles dealt with, giving her the time and space to think on what to do next.

At least until the PsiCorps Sentinel had jumped onto the rooftop behind her.

He'd landed quietly from an armor-assisted jump, a specter of matte gray armored fabric and artificial muscle beneath lightweight vahlenite plating, clad in a long psi-shielding coat that clung around his upper body and was secured at the waist, flapping loosely down to his shins. Face was hidden behind an angular collapsable helmet, and at his waist was a laser pistol. On the upper arms of his coat were glowing, holographic projections of a purple sunburst surrounding a white eye: the sigil of XCOM PsiCorps.

There was only the one Sentinel, but every Sentinel had a team; everyone knew that Sentinels worked with a dangerous team of specialists who backed them up. It was one of the things all the vids and sensory dramas and sims agreed on.

So she bolted the moment she saw him, leaping off the rooftop and channeling her psionics to cushion her landing two stories down on the next roof amid a cloud of purple light. It was shaky holding together that much focus and energy, but she was getting better at it. Yesterday had just been a slip-up. A heated argument. A brief loss of control.

She kept trying to convince herself of that. It helped her to not think about the bodies and the screaming.

The fugitive dashed across the rooftop, changing directions multiple times and running through different module stacks. SAF construction was haphazard in many points; the rooftops were littered with irregular shipping crates, prefab structures, and HVAC and comms equipment. She jumped over barriers, weaved around buildings, and twice leapt to another rooftop with a burst of kinetic energy.

And everytime she looked back, he was on the rooftop with her, about ten to fifteen meters back, keeping pace.

"What the hell, asshole?" she muttered between pants. She would have killed at the moment to have some real Mental talent, if only to feel him for a psychic aura. Not all Sentinels were psychics, but if she knew what he could do… Or if he even had abilities or was just wearing some fancy tech or biomods….

She put on speed, desperation giving her the energy to keep moving. She channeled more power around her; her Internal abilities were limited to slight boosts to strength or speed, but her Energy talents could make up for that lack by manipulating the kinetic energy of her body. That was a lot more dangerous, but the Sentinel was hugging her ass almost as tightly as her pants.

She peeled ahead, leaving the long-coated specter of PsiCorps behind. Minutes of flat-out running and jumping passed, her head moving on a swivel to watch her surroundings. Where was the Sentinel's support? She kept expecting to spot the cloaked shimmers of next-gen HULU drones, or the bounding figures of FENRIS robo-hounds. She watched for the inevitable pack of PsiCorps stormtroopers in Zephyr flightsuits dropping down on all sides, or a Voidranger with a sniper drifting overhead ready to put a plasma beam through her head.

But there was nothing, which was almost more worrying. She bounded down the side of a building, hopping from external scaffolding and fire escapes down into an alley. She was in an industrial zone, prefab factories and low warehouses dominating the area, so she kept moving for a while, checking behind her for the Sentinel. She didn't see him anymore, and wondering if she'd really lost him or if he'd just somehow tagged her with a tracker.

Finally, she came to a halt in an alley between a pair of looming warehouses. The air was cool, the sun had finally descended past the horizon. In this part of the Eden Prime, dusk came with cool mists settling down over the landscape, and distant haziness wreathed the buildings, turning lights into glimmering auras. She swept the area, her AR showing electrical sources and moving objects, but nothing beyond a few bits of trash. Except-

A burst of movement, and she channeled her energy, rough and violent pulses of purple wreathing her hands. For a moment, she remembered the sheer rush of energy that had flowed through her yesterday during the argument, before exploding, but she fought to control and direct it at the movement-

And dragged it back as she saw the big gray cat staring at her a couple of meters away. Its back was raised, ears flat and mouth open in a hiss, but beyond that it was… just a damn cat. A big one, maybe totaling at ten to twelve kilos, with long, bushy hair and pale green eyes. It was perched on a soot-stained crate discarded at one end of the alley, and yowled at her before jumping up a couple of meters to an air-conditioning unit overhead and glaring at her.

The fugitive let the raging energy die down and fade away, plunging the alley into misty darkness again, and shook her head, leaning against the wall and breathing hard for a few moments.

"I nearly made a rug out of you," she muttered, and forced some more energy through her body. She had done this often enough to have a good understanding of her limits, and could guess how far she could go before the energy started giving her "psi-high" at which point things started becoming… trippy.

Pushing off the wall, she began to run again, watching for anymore pursuit.

The cat stared after her for a few moments, and then leapt up seven meters to the rooftop, and started pacing after her in the mists.

* * *

><p>"Has the district been cleared?" the Sentinel asked as he jogged across the rooftops, letting the Atlas low-profile suit take up most of the slack while he rested his taxed reserves. Too much enhancement was never a good thing, and while he could keep low-level boosting ongoing for a long time, he didn't want to draw upon too much psionic energy. Psi-high was a nasty thing when it resulted from Internal overuse, especially in a psionic as strong as him.<p>

"Industrial zone, not many people around besides a few homeless and security," replied Sergeant McTavish. He had to yell a bit over the hum of the Voidranger's engines as it circled overhead. The Sergeant was not particularly keen with direct messaging, preferring vocal communication unless the situation required otherwise. "We've sent a general alert to the whole district. Anyone still there is either not connected to the mesh or too stubborn to pull out."

"I don't think we'll need it," the Sentinel said with a shrug. "I'm pretty sure I can talk Knight down once she tires herself out."

"You know what's real exhausting, sir?" McTavish asked. "A laser right through the upper thigh."

"You're not shooting her," the Sentinel growled.

"Oh, I've got a direct line on her from up here," McTavish replied. "Give me the word and I'll put her down. Not like she can't get a new leg or sleeve into a new body once her time's up."

"Don't shoot her," the Sentinel repeated.

"Sir, she killed fourteen people when she went nova. Dumped seventeen more in the hospital!" McTavish's growl echoed down the line. "Thank God all of them had stacks..."

"Knight's a stupid kid who didn't go to PsiCorps when she first manifested," the Sentinel replied. "And last thing we need is a psychic whose strongest memory of PsiCorps is us shooting her leg off."

Especially one this strong. She was B-tier, minimum, with some serious Energy/Kinetic chops. She could be a serious asset if he could convince her to stand down and go in for training. But more than that, PsiCorps had a reputation. Rumors and conspiracy theories abounded hinting that they were some secretive, sinister cabal, and media portrayal was a mixed bag of corruption and heroism, but the simple fact was that PsiCorps was a police force whose core mission was protecting and training psychics.

That, and he just didn't want another kid to get killed because they couldn't control their powers.

"Garm?" he asked as he followed the fugitive discreetly. The Sentinel could easily see through his partner's implants to track the girl, but he preferred to keep talking with his team.

"Knight's getting tired," the other Sentinel reported, his voice thick with Scandinavian accent. "Put on the speed, Shep. She's about to hit the edge of this arcology section. Things will get interesting."

"Get the arc throwers ready," Shepard replied.

"What happened to not shooting her?" Garm asked.

"I want Knight alive," the other Sentinel said. "But she's a dumb kid who went nova in a shopping mall because of an argument with her boyfriend. Be ready to shock her if it goes bad."

"Copy that," Garm said with a yowling chuckle. "Arc Thrower's primed. She's close to the edge."

"Big Sky, illuminate her."

* * *

><p>She was running along the edge of the industrial area, close to a wall dividing it off from a series of residential apartments. She was likely plotting the best path to get over the wall and out of the sight of PsiCorps when white light blinded her. She skidded to a halt, both hands flying up to protect her eyes from the Voidranger that had finally shown itself.<p>

"Jennifer Knight," an amplified voice called behind her, and she turned away from the dropship that was covering her. She glared daggers at the Sentinel as he leapt onto the rooftop after her, his pace quick but not hurried.

He could see fear, anger, and resignation warring in her features. Purple light flickered around her head, and the wind blew her black hair into wild tousles. Knight clenched her firsts, hands trembling.

But she didn't attack.

He could work with that.

A twitch of his finger, triggering his omnitool, and his helmet folded down and back, exposing his face from the mouth up and ears forward. His features were chiseled and handsome, with a dark, close-trimmed beard and hair shaved close. Cold blue eyes peered back at the psionic fugitive.

"My name is Shepard," he offered, and took a step closer. Knight leaned back, the light flickering a bit sharper, but did not move. "Major Adam Shepard, PsiCorps Sentinel."

"I guessed that much," she growled. "Could hear your jackboots the entire time you were chasing me."

Shepard didn't rise to the bait. He checked his AR, and could see Garm approaching from Knight's left side as he talked to her. With the floodlight beaming down fromt hat direction, she was effectively blinded.

"They only sent one of you?" Knight asked, and the corner of her mouth quirked up. Bravado in the face of fear. "After what I did to that shopping mall? You've got a quad."

"What happened isn't something you should be proud of," Shepard replied, noting the krogan euphemism. It matched the file he'd read. Knight had good grades in school, but she had also been running with a bad crowd even before manifesting. Active interests in government, political science, and sociology, but also affiliation with anarchist groups and gangs. Some criminal offenses, but nothing serious. At least until yesterday.

"I'm not," she said, her smile fading. "I didn't want to hurt anyone."

"Thirty-one people might disagree with that," he replied. "You're lucky the ones who were killed had stacks. No one suffered permanent death."

"Yeah, or you'd kill me, right?" Knight asked, her posture shifting forward a bit as anger rose up. "Sentinels only play nice as long as there's no gravestones."

He didn't respond, but she was right to a degree. If someone had died when she'd cut loose this morning, then he would have been a lot more aggressive; McTavish would have been cleared to take her leg off. If she'd done more than run, he wouldn't have even bothered talking. One didn't play games when a psychic went violent. But he would have still tried to avoid killing her if possible.

"What happened yesterday was an accident," he said, keeping his tone calm. "Making us chase you down was a problem, but you didn't hurt anyone once you ran. We noticed that."

"You would have sniped me hours ago if I tried fighting back," she snarled. "I'm not stupid."

"Then why run?" he asked.

"Because…" Knight's fingers tightened, and the psychic light intensified for a moment before she dragged it back under control. "Because I wanted to be left alone! You know how long I've been trying to keep this secret? Four months, six days, twelve hours, nine minutes! And I knew the moment I told anyone I had the Gift, you PsiCorps fuckers would come for me!"

Her glare intensified, and the power flared again. A surprising amount of control for an untrained psychic, but if her words were right she had been living with it for a while.

"I knew I would never have a normal life again!"

"That's true," Shepard said, keeping his tone gentle. "Your power makes you special. Do you know how I learned I had the Gift?"

"I don't care," she snapped.

"Batarians attacked Mindoir," he explained, taking a couple of slow steps toward her when she didn't reply. "I don't know if you were old enough to remember when that happened. My family died, gunned down by the slavers. Next thing I knew, the power was pouring through me. People were screaming. They were dying."

Knight's expression softened for a moment, but her fingers stayed clenched.

"I stopped them," Shepard continued. "I don't really remember how, but I used my powers. I fought the batarians and protected my colony until they fled. When the PPA came to retake the colony, they found me. I joined XCOM."

He took another step forward. Shepard didn't want to hurt her, but he mitigated his sympathy and kept ready to act; yesterday had been a textbook case of why one went to XCOM when one started manifesting. At least she looked like she was calming down.

"If you want to be left alone we can help you with that," he said. "There are options if you don't want to use your powers. But I can promise you, those are going to be very limited if you keep running or fighting."

He saw his moment, and held up an empty hand, an offering to her. His other hand went to his side, detaching the sidearm.

"What happened was an accident, but that's no reason to let that destroy your life," he said. "I want to help you, Jennifer."

She stared at his hand for a moment, then looked back up toward him. The psionic light flared up again around her, and her emotions warred. He could see a vicious, defiant spirit there, but also intelligence and rationality. Half of her wanted to fight or flee, while the other half was listening. He could only hope that the latter won out, because if the former did so, someone was likely going to die tonight.

She stared at him for several long seconds, and the light suddenly faded.

"Fuck it," she said, her tone quiet and defeated. "You've got a point, Shepard." She sank down to a sitting position on the rooftop. "No more running."

He let out the breath he'd been holding, and quietly holstered the pistol. He walked toward, hands again at his side.

"You made the right decision," he said as he approached.

"The only decision, you mean," she muttered. She looked up at him as his omnitool lit up, and a set of handcuffs flashed into existence. She held up her hands. "Yeah, I'm familiar with this part."

As he restrained the young woman, the floodlight from the Voidranger shifted away, and the aircraft descended. That also let her see who had been approaching her.

"Oh, fuck," she said as she saw the gray-furred cat crouching near the edge of the rooftop, staring at her. "That's how you were following you planted a tracker, but you were using a smart cat."

"Hell of a smart cat, yeah," a low, gruff voice with a Scandinavian accent replied, and the cat abruptly leaned back, setting onto its rear legs. The forelegs crossed over its chest in an oddly humanlike motion, and one of the paws - actually a small humanlike hand - hefted a compact, narrow, boxy weapon that resembled a blunted handgun. "Should have let me shock her, Shepard."

"You have an uplifted cat?" Knight asked, eyes widening for a moment before she chuckled. "I knew PsiCorps was weird, but…."

"He relies on me to be the brains of the pair," Garm replied. His voice was an odd mix of catlike yowls and a completely normal, undistorted human voice thanks to the translator hidden around his neck, underneath his long fur.

"I tolerate you, Garm," Shepard said, pulling Knight up to her feet. "Like a person tolerates venereal disease or corrupted AR code."

"You never compliment me that way! I should be flattered," Garm exclaimed.

"I had to be run down by a viking cat and nicest Sentinel in PsiCorps," Knight muttered as the Voidranger descended toward the rooftop.

"Hah!" Garm replied, pacing around Knight And Shepard. "You'd disagree if you were on Mindoir. If you get the chance, download an XP from one of the colonists there. You'll see very quickly what my partner can do when he's angry."

He stopped and stared at her with his eyes. The intellect behind those slit, pale green orbs was intense and unnerving.

"And you'll understand that surrendering to Shepard before he gets violent was the smartest move you've ever made, kid."

"Garm, enough," Shepard said, shaking his head. The cat knew he didn't like being reminded of the raid. The Voidranger's engines were rapidly drowning out everything else as it approached, swinging around to expose the rear loading ramp. "Let's get aboard."

"Hey, cat," Knight abruptly said as the ramp lowered. "You do know you're named after a _dog_, right?"

"I am named after the _guardian_ of _Hel_, little girl," the uplifted cat replied with a snort. They started walking up the ramp.

"Besides, I respect my canine brethren." He waved a hand dismissively. "Look at this one. Trying of accuse me of being speciesist! I Might have to quote from the Poetic Edda to show you what my name-"

"Ah, crap," McTavish called from inside the Voidranger. "Someone brought up his religion again, didn't they? Get the little one some nip before he starts that bullshit..."

* * *

><p><em>XCS Market Garden<em> orbited over Eden Prime, a silver sword that kept position over the Maria de los Angelos arcology where the drama had erupted. Jennifer Knight had been transferred to the _XCS Excalibur_ for containment and cooldown, and now the Voidranger carrying Shepard, Garm, and their support team was docking with their home frigate.

_Sir, I don't think that was wise,_ Sergeant McTavish messaged Shepard as they walked off the Voidranger and across the cargo hangar of the XCOM frigate. They were trailed by four other XCOM soldiers wearing heavier tactical Atlas armors, the modern successors of the older Titan suits. Garm was walking among them, now clad in a loose-fitting olive green XCOM jumpsuit-sweater, laughing at something one of the troopers was saying.

_That was my call, Sergeant,_ Shepard replied, glancing at the Scottish-born soldier looming next to him. McTavish wore an olympian body, like many XCOM troopers, this one built big and brawny. His head was clean-shaved save a short mohawk down the center if his scalp.

The hangar was a fairly small one, as XCOM ships went. With the exception of a small set of current-gen FAFNIR drones kept in recessed compartments on the hull - a Citadel design decision XCOM had incorporated - the hangar was devoted entirely to the arming and maintenance of the _Market Garden's_ pair of Voidrangers, as well as its small compliment of troopers. it was a bit cramped, with the two Voidrangers occupying about half the space in the bay, the second one being serviced by a dozen crewmen and drones while Shepard's was being inspected by the same. The room was filled with the hissing, whirring, and clatter of machinery, and the aroma of a dozen lubricants, chemicals, and acrid smoke filled the air.

C_an't exactly keep you alive if you get in arm's reach of a Kinetic Eight, sir,_ McTavish replied. _One raised barrier and you're stuck in with someone who can liquefy you._

_I understand, Sergeant,_ Shepard replied as they reached the elevator. _We'll discuss this later._

_Yeah, that'll be fun,_ McTavish replied, his words accompanied by enough sarcasm that Shepard rolled his eyes.

"Good luck with the Captain, sir," the sergeant spoke aloud, and turned to the troops. "Okay, to debrief." He waved a hand to cut off the annoyed grunts and groans. "I don't care if you spent the whole mission wanking in the 'Ranger, we've still got to do this. Come on, get to it."

Shepard and Garm stepped into the central elevator, and it began to rise, a curious vertigo feeling washing over the Sentinels as they passed through different gravity fields. The cat had dropped to all fours, tail idly waving back and forth.

"Garm," Shepard started, and the cat let out a quiet yowl before he could continue.

"I know, I shouldn't have brought up Mindoir," the feline Sentinel said. He looked up at Shepard, ears perked up. "But I have to admit, you did a hell of a job to those slaver bastards."

"I lost my _family_ there," Shepard muttered. "I know that doesn't mean much to you, but…."

"Right, I won't bring it up again," Garm replied.

It was true enough. Uplifts often didn't have immediate families, considering many were born in a lab, and Garm was one of the earlier generations of feline uplifts. Of course, early generations sometimes had mental problems; Garm's insistence on following the old Norse pantheon was far from the oddest quirk in the uplift population.

And it explained his fascination with Mindoir. No matter how you cut it, killings hundreds of batarians singlehandedly in a berserk fury would appeal to the old Norse gods. Shepard didn't like thinking on it, but he didn't deny the impact of what had happened there. During the blackout incident, he'd killed annihilated the main strength of the Kor'talav Cartel, the last big batarian slaving cartel in the galaxy, and destroying the majority of their membership had crippled them. The slavers had already been under heavy pressure thanks to the Citadel and humanity stepping up anti-piracy and slavery enforcement, and smashing the last big cartel had devastated the entire "industry." Garm deeply respected Shepard for that, and also because in the process of massacring the Kor'talav Cartel, he'd inadvertently destroyed the Batarian Hegemony.

That had shaken up the galaxy, mostly because of how no one had really expected the Hegemony's implosion. The batarians' government and culture ran heavily on an oppressive caste system, which was technically illegal but barely tolerated by the Citadel for economic and diplomatic reasons, as the batarians made a useful ally in stabilizing the Terminus borders. That changed after 2103 and the meeting with the geth, humanity, and the Citadel. The Council had ordered a cessation of slavery practices, both on moral grounds and because it helped fuel piracy and raiding of colonies.

The Hegemony had told the Council to fuck off. Politely. The Hegemony's economy and culture relied too heavily upon slavery. The Council had responded by sanctioning the hell out of the batarians. Already a pariah among the Citadel species, the Hegemony's struggling economy was only able to keep working with the help of "independent" mercenary, pirate, and slaver groups raiding shipping and bringing in slaves. The Citadel, humanity, and even the geth had intensified anti-pirate operations, steadily destroying pirate and slaver groups and weakening the batarian economy further. No one wanted to start slavery or piracy operations in the ensuing vacuum, as startup costs were a bit too steep, and generally involved kinetic strikes, plasma barrages, and many people with job titles involving the words "psionic" or "commando."

Then Shepard had crippled the Kor'talav Cartel, last major supplier of slaves to the Hegemony, delivering a kick to the foundations of the entire teetering structure.

The Hegemony's economy imploded. Its caste system then exploded a few years later, and the government collapsed. By 2183, there was no Batarian Hegemony, instead replaced by half a dozen warring, independent stellar powers and a number minor revolutionary states that were absorbed by the Turian Hierarchy as willing clients.

So, Shepard's first act of violence, before ever joining XCOM, had killed an interstellar nation-state. He didn't particularly like to advertise that fact.

* * *

><p><em>Market Garden's<em> comms and briefing room was situated behind the CIC, a spherical room surrounded by psionic and electronic shielding that also served as an emergency survival room and secondary bridge. The only way in was a single door connecting to the CIC, and it had a dozen chairs spaced around platform in the center of the room. It wasn't much room, but then, the frigate didn't have a large crew. Typically only the department heads and senior officers assembled here.

Today there was only Captain David Anderson. He wore a stout, strong, dark-skinned body, closely matching the one he'd been born in, and was clad in an XCOM olive-green jumpsuit-sweater. Anderson was a career Direct Action officer, as were most of the _Market Garden's_ crew. The majority of XCOM ships were Direct Action, even frigates specialized for PsiCorps or Sentinel work like this one. The general mantra was "Sentinels find the problem, Direct Action blows it to hell."

"Captain Anderson," both Shepard and Garm said as they entered, and Anderson nodded. He was staring at a hologram in the center of the room, showing a blue planet wreathed in thick white clouds over eighty percent of its surface.

"Major Shepard, Lieutenant Garm," the captain replied. "Good work down there."

"Thank you, sir," Shepard replied, while Garm hopped into a chair and sat up, cat-style. Shepard checked the local internal mesh, curious about the planet Anderson was studying. His AR returned it immediately: Proteus, a shared human colony in the Artemis Tau cluster.

"Too bad the South Atlantic Federation disagrees," Anderson said with a tired sigh.

"They can stuff it up their ass," Garm yowled.

"We had jurisdiction," Shepard replied with a more polite scowl, sitting down opposite Garm. "They signed the 2180 updated treaty. We had full authority to arrest a psionic criminal."

"The police and SAF military garrison commanders have been messaging me constantly," Anderson said, shaking his head. "Its the usual pissing contest. Maria de los Angelos Police wanted us to advise them on the takedown, but leave it to them."

"We would have been advising a bloodbath," Shepard replied. "Or have a dead kid."

"That and those idiots just let her walk out of the containment zone," Garm added. "What were we going to do, just let her walk away?"

"I'm not criticizing you," Anderson said with a shake of his head. "Like I said, damned good job. You took her down without firing a shot, which is an ideal result for this scenario. And no matter what the locals say, we did everything by the book. I just wanted to let you know the reaction."

He then nodded toward the hologram of Proteus.

"You'll want to get something to eat and some sleep after this briefing," he continued. "Because we're going straight into a hornet's nest."

Shepard and Garm glanced to one another. The cat's ears pulled back a bit, and he yawned, before standing, turning in place, and plopping down in a lazy mass of fur and jumpsuit.

"What's happened?" Shepard asked. "That's Proteus, right?"

"Exactly, Major," Anderson replied. "Files are on the local mesh, you can check them-"

Shepard did so, speeding up his mental processing and coupling that with analysis implants.

Proteus. Garden world, well within habitable range for humans and most other oxygen breathing life. Levo-amino primary life, so most Citadel races could easily live there. Except it was a pure ocean world; closest thing to land was near-surface undersea shelves. Also wracked by constant storms.

Strategic Defense Coalition had found it first, but the Pan Pacific Alliance had swept in shortly afterward. Both sides had initiated colonization behind the sights of their respective weapons, but a couple of years' negotiations had resulted in an amicable colonization agreement. The lack of surface area and violent weather meant that nearly all of the colony structures were submerged. Primary industries were marine research, underwater mining, and marine agriculture; apparently local conditions were conducive to a number of particular engineered marine delicacies that were hard to grow on Earth.

Current population was about a hundred and forty thousand and steadily growing, split about evenly between the two dominant alliances, with independent settlements from the others.

"-whenever you feel like it," Anderson finished as Shepard reverted to normal speed.

"Already done," Shepard said, and Garm snorted.

"Show off," he mrowled.

"Then you know what the general situation is," Anderson replied. He waved a hand, and the globe shifted, cloud layers peeling away and zooming in on a section of continental shelf. A latticework of submerged buildings appeared.

"This is Neo Hengsha, primary SDC colony and capital of their stake on Proteus," Anderson said. "China is the primary backer, although Iran, Singapore, and Thailand are significant investors. Primary exporter of marine agriculture on the planet and SDC's main spaceport. Sixty thousand people live here."

He gestured again, and the globe tracked a few hundred kilometers south toward open ocean.

"That's not our focus. This is."

"Looks like more ocean," Garm said with a indifferent meow.

A marker appeared over the ocean, and next to the globe appeared a new hologram: a trio of metal spheres, interconnected with tubes and latticework. Long, cylindrical modules were attached, along with ballast tanks and a vertical cylinder that was almost certainly an element zero core.

"This facility doesn't officially exist," Anderson said. "Technically, not even XCOM is supposed to know this exists."

There was only one reason Shepard could think of for any of the major powers to hide a facility from XCOM knowledge. He slowed time again, examining the structures closely, and after a moment he recognized the general design and shape of the spheres. He'd spent some time in one after Mindoir, and had put a lot of the Gifted in others after they had lost control of their powers.

"Those are psionic containment spheres," he said. "Those outer layers are to protect against leaks or ruptures?"

"Exactly," Anderson replied.

"SDC's running their own little psi research lab?" Garm mused. "No wonder they'd keep that secret."

"Its not illegal for them to run their own own psi labs," Anderson said with a disapproving frown. "So long as XCOM is allowed to monitor. But they're running this one on their own without XCOM supervision."

"Are we being sent to crash their mind-baking party?" Garm asked, his yowls eager. Shepard frowned himself, not so keen on the idea - at least not without the whole Strike on hand to make sure the SDC didn't try anything stupid. They wouldn't _attack_ the facility, but they would definitely show up to provide disapproving scowls, as well as publicly revealing the site's existence. If SDC tried to stop them, well… opening fire on XCOM personnel was a _terrible_ idea considering their international standing.

"No, we're a bit late on that regard," Anderson replied, and the image shifted. The SDC psi lab was gone, replaced by a few chunks of floating debris. "Someone else attacked the facility and destroyed the whole complex."

Shepard leaned back, scratching his chin. That was bad news. Very bad news.

"I take it SDC informed us of the facility because of its destruction?" he asked, and Anderson nodded.

"They're in a panic, because of the implications," the captain replied. "A colossal breach security, on top of an attack on a base this secret and important. And they believe that the perpetrators are still on Proteus."

"How do they know that?" Shepard asked.

"Because they're blockading the planet and not letting any ships leave the surface," Anderson said, his tone flat, and Shepard sat up.

"Proteus is a shared world," he said. "They can't blockade PPA or independent ships."

"They are," Anderson said, crossing his arms. "So I think you both understand what kind of political shitstorm is about to ensue. The SDC's spinning a number of justifications, but we all know they can't reveal why they're blockading the planet."

Shepard exhaled, because he certainly did. The SDC couldn't exactly tell anyone that they were hunting for someone who had raided their secret, unobserved psionics laboratory. To the other alliances, this would look like an unprovoked blockade of a lucrative resource colony.

That meant war if this wasn't defused fast.

"And the final twist on this this insanity," Anderson added. "SDC doesn't think everyone was killed in the raid."

"Someone snatched their psychics," Garm said, and Anderson nodded.

"SDC thinks that at least some of their psionic trainees were kidnapped, which is why they brought us in," the captain replied. "With the blockade in place, they know that no one's fled the planet with their psychics. But they don't have a skilled psionic pool to draw from. Not like PsiCorps does."

"What's the reaction been?" Shepard asked.

"PPA's scrambling a task force, and the EU is naturally moving to assist," Anderson replied. "A lot of back and forth arguing and accusations. Strike Four is mobilizing to play mediator. And you two have been tapped to help lead the Sentinels trying to find the bastards behind this insanity before the shooting starts."

"Well, naturally," Garm replied. "The powers that be are wise, and recognize talent and expertise."

"So they're sending me in solo?" Shepard asked the cat, and Garm responded by narrowing his eyes and letting loose a hairball hack of a cough.

"You be sure to inspect your boots carefully."

"We need to find the psychics quickly," Anderson added. "Which is why we've had to bring in a specialist."

Garm's head snapped back toward Anderson, ears flattening.

"Not another 'specialist'. I _hate_ babysitting," the cat muttered.

"She has her own escort," Anderson replied. "But this specialist is an extremely powerful Mental. She should be able to find the missing SDC psychics very quickly. You have to keep her safe."

"So, yes, _babysitting_," Garm yowled, tail twitching in unhappy jerks.

"They boarded while you were down taking care of Knight," Anderson continued. "We'll be linking up with the rest of Strike Four and heading for the Eden Prime Array shortly. Get some food and rest. Any questions?"

"Emergency transfer?" Garm asked.

"Denied. Any serious questions?" Shepard shook his head. "Dismissed."

* * *

><p>Garm was unhappy, and didn't try to hide it. Then again, Shepard noted, he was a cat, and unlike humans most uplifts had trouble completely hiding their emotions in their body language. The low sweeping of his tail and turned-back ears made his annoyance clear to everyone as they stepped off the elevator to the crew deck.<p>

"Ugh, I wish we had still had a vermin problem," the cat muttered. "I need to hunt something down and kill it. Slowly."

Shepard said nothing as they walked around the short corridor from the elevator to the mess. They walked through the doorway, just forward of the central elevator, and stepped into the mess just in time to see an entire tray of food get dumped into the gaping maw of a grizzly bear.

The massive, snorting, chomping form wore a standard olive-green XCOM jumpsuit-sweater, and its forearms ended with clawed but decidedly humanlike hands. A plasma cannon sat on the table next to the uplift as he inhaled the food in a stomach-churning display of ursine hunger.

Sitting next to him was a young, pale-skinned woman with black hair pulled back into a braid, also clad in an XCOM jumpsuit-sweater. The sigil of PsiCorps glowed on her upper arms, just like Shepard's, and when his eyes tracked over them he could get a reading on her psionic talent and rating.

He came to a dead halt when he saw a scrolling list of _every_ known psionic talent, none of them ranked less than a seven, and many in the double digits. She sat quietly by the bear, eating her own food with far more control and less eagerness, and ignored the grizzly as he gorged himself.

As the bear set the tray down, his eyes settled on Shepard and Garm, and he abruptly froze.

"Oh, uh, Majo Shefeb," the bear said, and swallowed. "Sorry, sir." He rose to his feet, moving with far more agility than anything that dsize was entitled to, and snapped a sharp salute. The powerful psychic next to him looked up and jumped up as well, matching the bear's gesture.

"Lieutenant James Vega, sir," the bear rumbled. "Me and my partner have been assigned to your command."

"At ease," Shepard said, matching their salute, and he turned to the young woman. "You're the specialist team I was told about?"

"Yes sir," the woman replied, her voice soft, but her smile was eager and genuine. Now that their eyes met, he could see that they were glowing faintly with the color of sunlit amber, another sign of immense psionic power. She held out her hand, and he shook it, keeping his knees steady as he _felt_ the surge of psionic energy running through her skin, a wave of raw, vibrating power.

"Lieutenant Alma Wade, sir. Pleased to meet you, Major."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Codex - Organizations - XCOM<em>**

_The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or XCOM, was founded by humanity in the 20th century to research and engage hostile alien life. XCOM was a covert initiative funded by a Council of Funding Nations, and proved decisively effective during the Ethereal War in the early 21st Century. XCOM subsequently continued to serve as the spearhead of human scientific and space exploration, pioneering many human technologies, including wormhole arrays, brain uploading, cortical stacks, biological and mechanical augmentation, and early mass effect research. XCOM was also pivotal in establishing early contact with both the Geth Consensus and the Citadel in 2103._

_XCOM is a neutral organization within the human political spectrum. The organization draws funding and personnel from every nation on Earth, and its charter and mandate specify it is not beholden to any nation. In addition, XCOM maintains the right to police and train psionic individuals within the human population. As part of its charter, XCOM has to limit its military capability to one fifth of the total military capacity of the smallest supranational alliance._

_XCOM is divided into four divisions. **Direct Action** is the primary military component of the organization, possessing the majority of ships and military personnel and intended to engage hostile alien forces or support the other three divisions' operations. **Research and Development** conducts cutting edge technological research, focusing on recovered alien technology. **Intelligence** is tasked with both gathering intelligence on alien powers as well as identifying internal human threats such as the EXALT conspiracy. **Psionic Corps** is tasked with identifying, training, protecting, and policing human psionics._

_XCOM also employs special agents known as Sentinels to carry out investigations, irregular warfare, and police actions. Sentinels combine the duties of detective, commando, and spy. Most Sentinels are semi-independent agents who assemble their own specialist teams, and are given significant leeway to carry out their missions._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Codex - Technology - Psionics<em>**

_An ability identified in the human (and later, asari) species to alter their environment or their own physical bodies using an as-yet-unidentified power source, referred to among humans as "the Gift." Psionics is a natural component of the asari, coupled with their biotics, but manifests in various degrees in humans. Human psionics are divided into five broad "disciplines."_

_**Energy** involves the manipulation of thermal, electromagnetic, or kinetic energy in the surrounding environment. **Internal** uses psionic energy to enhance the physical body, altering aspects such as strength, speed, mental capacity, reaction times, and healing rate. **Mental** involves the use of psionics to strengthen or affect the minds of others, as well as detecting other minds or resisting external mental influence. **Spatial** involves control of the locations and spatial relations of objects, allowing for one to create gateways between objects, wormholes in zero gravity environments, or short-range teleportation. **Manifestation** involves use of psionics to generate physical or insubstantial projections of objects, creatures or entire environments._

_Asari use psionics in conjunction with biotics for finely-tuned manipulation of dark energy fields and gravity. In addition, psionics are integral to the "melding" process that allows for connections of nervous systems and asari reproduction. The revelation of psionics as a component of their biology has caused significant social and individual consternation among the asari, but has not fundamentally altered their society. Most asari treat the revelation to simply be a discovery of and enrichment of their own powers._

_Psionic disciplines are identified using a complex ranking system to identify individual disciplines, subdivisions, and power levels within each division. This has been reduced to a common shorthand of Discipline: Numerical Ranking, followed by (Subdivisions: Numerical Rankings). For example, Energy 4 (Thermal 5, Kinetic 3)._

_Most psionic talents and disciplines are naturally born, but can raise their capacity through continuous training. High-stress situations such as combat or disasters can trigger "amplification events" that dramatically boost psionic power. Many children manifesting psionic abilities can have a "nova event," which is an uncontrolled amplification event that can cause significant destruction. This is one of the reasons why XCOM's PsiCorps insists that children undergo regular screening for the Gift and why any child manifesting psychic ability is required to be registered and taken for training immediately._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Author's Notes:<em>** I've never written a cat before. Writing Garm was amusing.

If Shepard's outfit sounds like the typical Warlock's outfit from Destiny, yes. Sentinels rock the Warlock.

Yes, Jennifer Knight is Jack/Subject Zero, who actually lived a decent life in this setting.


	9. Chapter Seven: Proteus Landing

_The turian-designed Exo synthetic frames were originally designed as an emergency survival system to protect the brain of mortally-wounded soldiers - and as militant as the turians were, they had a lot of those. Enterprising engineers developed combat models of the Exo sustainment platform, effectively allowing mortally-wounded soldiers who volunteered for the duty to return to the battlefield. Refinements to the design eventually allowed Exo-sustained turian minds to function as fully-functional members of society. It wasn't until humans arrived with their Ethereal-derived direct brain-uploading technology and cortical stacks, however, that Exos became fully synthetic, with the turian brain being uploaded into a cyberbrain._

_In modern turian society, Exos are broadly restricted to those who suffered lethal injuries or diseases, and it is uncommon to see a turian who uploaded into an Exo without dying beforehand. A strong cultural stigma exists toward those who haven't "earned their metal." And frankly, I can see why people would upload into Exos; no issues with diseases, eat as much as you want, and with the right mods you can smash down walls._

**_-Doctor Alvaro Mendes, Professor of Synthetic Sociology, University of Titan_**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Chapter 7: Proteus Landing<strong>_

* * *

><p>"Found 'em yet?"<p>

"No. Just like when you asked me two minutes ago."

"Eh. Bored."

It was a rare sunny day on Proteus, the thick white clouds parting to let light onto the storm-wracked ocean world. Since about eighty percent of the time the planet was either being hammered by a storm or the sky was obscured by gray rainclouds, the rare clear days saw a significant amount of colonists coming topside to take in the sun. The colony habitats extended viewing platforms above the waves, complete with collapsible furniture and pavilions with automated bars and cafes.

Among the crowds taking in the clear morning were a pair sitting at a small table by the western railing, one staring out over the blue-gray ocean waves while the other stared at a fold-up terminal playing an old 21st century 2D action movie. Neither were really paying attention to the silly gunplay and martial arts occurring on the display; it was mostly just an excuse to not be bothered while they worked, and the terminal projected a local privacy field that distorted their words to outsiders.

The former was a turian, at least in his previous, non-Exo life. Now he had dull gray metal carapace sculpted into a close match to his original narrow, avian features, and blue slashes painted around his glowing blue eyes, nose and down the upper halves of his mandibles. He leaned back in his chair, idly sipping on a cheap fruity slush in an equally cheap memoryfoam cup.

The other, non-bored member of the pair stared blankly at the terminal as she worked. She was human, outward appearance in her mid-twenties, slim, short, and slightly built. She had shoulder-length brown hair, dark brown eyes, and delicate features.

"If you're bored," Alison Young said as she monitored a river of incoming data, "pull up a sim instead of bothering me. Or maybe tap into a feed and help me find this guy."

"You and I both know my limitations," Garrus Vakarian replied. "You're the one with the brain that can process thousands of data feeds at once. I can look at… what, two or three?"

"Then upgrade that stupid Exo brain of yours," Alison replied, not looking up at her partner. Garrus shrugged, slurping his slushie again.

"I'm actually wondering why I decided to come here," Garrus said after a moment. "Turians don't like water. We sink like rocks. Lots of flailing and thrashing. Doubly so when we sleeve into an Exo. Yet here I am on a human colony, covered in water."

"Eh, we'll both sink the same," Alison replied. "Problem with, y'know. No lungs."

"And there's only sixty thousand people living here," Garrus said. "It can't take that long to dig through and find one dockworker. On the Citadel we would have tracked him down in minutes. Neo Hengsha's got a fraction of the population."

"Xin."

"Eh?"

"In Mandarin its Xin Hengsha," Alison said.

"My translator calls it 'Neo'." Garrus said, doublechecking.

"Your translator is shit, then," Alison replied. "Download a better one."

"I prefer Neo."

"Ass," she grumbled, glancing up at the turian with an annoyed smirk.

"One made of twenty-two layers of composite alloys," Garrus replied, shifting in his seat, and slurped his drink again.

"Why do you do that?" she asked, glancing back down to her display and crossing her arms over her chest. "You don't need to drink."

"Neither do you. technically."

"I eat to maintain my pretty complexion," Alison said. "You're one hundred percent machine, not an ounce of meat on you."

"Yet I'm outfitted with a tremendously complex array of tactile, olfactory, and taste sensors that allow me full functionality and sensory capacity," Garrus said, reciting from the operator's manual. "So I can eat as much as I want, taste and smell it all, and not gain a kilo. And then dump it all when I'm full."

"Why not just regurgitate what you've eaten?" she asked.

"Because eeewwww."

She shrugged and then nodded toward his slushie, holding out a hand. He sighed, the sound tinged with a faint whirring, and handed it over.

"Dextro or levo?" she asked, looking into the cup.

"Does it matter?" he asked, and she shrugged before taking a sip.

"Not bad," she said, and handed it back before resuming her search. "To answer the original question, it's taking so long because I'm not supposed to have access to Xin Hengsha's security network."

"Ne-"

"Shut it. Hengsha's security has every man they can muster hunting across the station, so I have to be very careful lest their security infomorphs spot me tapping their network. Its taking time."

"Second question," Garrus said, holding up a finger. "What do we do when we find the target?"

"We didn't pack those weapons as presents for needy orphans," Alison replied, and Garrus shook his head.

"Because Hoplite Security LLC isn't contracted to provide law enforcement for the government of Neo Hengsha," Garrus continued. His head rang faintly as Alison smacked him on his metallic fringe. "So if we go after the people responsible for this whole mess, the police aren't going to be too happy with us. Especially because, well, the whole top-secret psychic thing." He paused. "We should have gone with Hyperion for the name."

"Both Hyperion and Desperado were already taken," Alison replied. "I wanted to go with Valkyrie, but XCOM already has a monopoly on the Norse mythology."

"But… Hoplite? I know, human history, but the name just sounds-"

"Got him," Alison said, sitting up.

"Patch me," Garrus replied, swiveling toward her. A moment later, data feeds spilled over his optical inputs.

They showed a lean, black-haired and yellow-skinned human - Asian origin, if Garrus remembered his human biology right - wearing a blue dockworker's jumpsuit pushing another human down a maintenance corridor. Garrus checked the source: Maintenance Corridor 33-A-West, two kilometers south of their position.

"You certain?" Garrus asked, looking at the second human. Male, middle-aged in appearance, blond, close-clipped beard, wearing a generic brown business suit. Their target had a small kinetic pistol pointed at the second human's lower back.

"Fac-rec and local mesh signature match Edgar Chen," Alison replied. "And Edgar Chen matches the time window for the attack. Unless someone's puppet-socking or sleeved into him."

Garrus checked the records on Chen again. Chinese born, 2142. Joined the SDC Navy in 2160, mustered out after five years of service, went to university for a doctorate in Marine Biology. Moved to Proteus in 2181. Couldn't find a job in his field, going by employment records, so he had found a job as a dockworker.

Visual records showed him returning at one of the Neo Hengsha docks on a personal underwater transport within their projected time window regarding the attack on the hidden SDC psionic lab. The records were wiped at the time he returned, but that was little obstacle to someone with Alison Young's talents and connections. Her more intensive investigation turned up a possible link to EXALT through suspicious data channels.

"Who's the hostage?" Garrus asked.

"Fac-rec running," she replied. "Pinging mesh and local spimes. Huh. Marshal Disler."

"Who?"

"Armacham Technology Corporation's local VP in charge of Proteus operations, on both sides of the pond," Alison said, concern working into her voice. "Not sure where or how Chen grabbed him, but…."

"Al, a question," Garrus said as he checked up on Disler. "ATC's operations on Proteus are mostly marine vehicle and weapons research, and contracted aerospace support."

"Yeah," Alison said with a nod. "What's up?"

"If you're running marine tech and aerospace support, why does your VP in charge have no education or experience in either field? Disler's got a Master's in Microbiology, Cellular Synthesis, and Psionic Biology."

Alison frowned, thinking.

"He's connected with SDC's lab," she said after a few moments. "ATC was likely supporting the lab operations, maybe contracting out psychic expertise."

She nodded, and stood.

"Okay. Let's go grab him before Hengsha police wakes up," she said, scooping up her terminal and shutting off their local privacy field.

"And find out what he wants with Disler," Garrus added as he rose more slowly, finishing his slushie.

EXALT, Armacham, and psionics, on a planet blockaded by the SDC and with a PPA and XCOM fleet on the way.

"Really, why the hell did I decide to come here?" Garrus muttered as he crushed his cup and tossed it into the trash.

"Because I fluttered my eyelashes and asked sweetly," Alison replied, and Garrus loosed a mechanical snort.

* * *

><p>Transition toward the Athens system had occurred a few hours ago after the <em>Market Garden<em> had rendezvoused with Strike Four at the wormhole array, and the entire task force was a couple of hours from their destination, having long since started deceleration burn. The PPA's own response fleet was well ahead of them by about an hour, but they had agreed to wait within Athens' Kuiper Belt until XCOM arrived.

Shepard's muse woke him after a few hours' worth of sleep, and he ate heartily once he'd awoken; psionics ate up nearly as many calories as biotics. Between Shepard and Vega, they were putting a dent in the ship's food supply. Afterwards, he started down into the frigate's cargo area - alternately known as "infantry country" because that was where the frigate's troops did exercises. It was also where the frigate's simulated range and infantry wardroom were situated, between the Voidranger deck and Engineering.

The range was little more than a mid-sized cargo compartment on the opposite side of the bay from the wardroom, save for the fact that it was next to the ship's armory and featured a simulated firing range that could stretch out to up to five false kilometers. While it was entirely possible for the troops to slide into a simulspace environment on the _Market Garden's_ computer network for training, the range and its test-firing was as much about properly calibrating the actual weapons as it was about maintaining marksmanship.

Shepard checked out a set of firearms from the armory maintenance tech, with the exception of his personal sidearm, which he maintained himself. He didn't expect anyone was using the range at this point, so when the door hissed open he was caught off-guard to see Lieutenant Wade test-firing a pistol. The weapon mimicked all the usual humming of a charging plasma weapon, while the range itself matched the burst and whoosh of superheated air ripping down a corridor at moving targets a dozen meters away.

"Lieutenant Wade," he said as she stepped up to the booth beside her, setting his plasma and fusion rifles down and activating the simulator.

"Major Shepard, sir," she replied with a deferential nod, but kept her eyes on her sights and continued firing. He couldn't tell if she'd known he was approaching before he'd entered the room, but she likely had. Her Empathy rating meant that she could likely pick up everyone on the ship passively, and determine their thoughts to exact detail if she concentrated.

Shepard hadn't spoken much with Wade since the meeting in the mess. There was the usual military small-talk: pleased-to-meet-you's and looking-forward-to-working-together's. After he'd eaten quickly, Shepard had left the mess for his quarters in officer country in the frigate's upper deck. And while there, he'd had his muse assemble Alma Wade's service history.

What his assistant VI reported on Wade's background was an example of exactly why he had been so gentle with Knight yesterday. A good kid with uncontrolled strength and rampant empathic powers; according to her father's interview after she'd been taken in by PsiCorps, she'd had a deeply troubled experience growing up, with hallucinations and hysteria that grew worse as she grew older, until she had gone nova in school. It was the reason Harlan wade had commissioned his own psionic containment shelter for her. Under PsiCorps education, however, she'd learned to control her powers, and eventually had gone through advanced psionic training on the PsiCorps Academy on Titan before being admitted into XCOM at seventeen. Three years of assignments mostly relegated to the inner colonies, and most of those low-risk, many as part of research or disaster-response teams.

That fact ran completely against her psionic ratings, which were impressively high across the board. He would have expected a psychic at her tier would have been working on the much more dangerous border sectors where her powers would be put to excellent use aganst threats from the Terminus. A-tiers were rare and always dispatched to the sharp end when they weren't put on training rotation.

"Is this your first field operation?" Shepard asked her as he started a medium-range program and set his plasma rifle to test-fire.

"Sir? Oh, um, no sir," she replied, pausing in her firing before resuming. "I've been sent down to the surface before with fireteams."

"Hostile worlds?" Shepard asked as he started tracking and shooting targets, in the form of glowing globes that slid back and forth at a simulated hundred meters and out.

"Human controlled," she replied. "I was usually asked to help with damage recovery. A few times we went down to locate psionic criminals or runners who went nova."

"You've done this type of operation before?" Shepard asked.

"Yes, though…" she frowned. "It wasn't easy. Disaster-response was simple. Pick up this piece of debris. Clear that obstruction. Simple enough, especially in evacuated areas where all the fear and pain didn't interfere."

"And tracking missions?" Shepard asked, plugging two targets in rapid succession.

Alma frowned again, shook her head, and fired several shots.

"Locating one person in a city of two hundred thousand isn't easy," she said. "Its kind of cliche, but one colored grain on a beach? Like that. Even with the Gift amping their powers. I usually ended up riding in Voidrangers for days while the ground teams and police tracked the target down and gave me an area to search. Even then I had a hard time finding them unless they evacuated a district. If someone else had the Gift in the area, I would often hit a false positive."

"But you could sweep an entire city if need be," Shepard said, and she nodded.

"Part of my training was actually sweeping colonies to see if anyone was using the Gift. I ended up spotting a bunch of kids and teenagers who were manifesting but hadn't reported in."

"Good to see we're making decent use of your talents," Shepard said, realizing that was probably why Alma wasn't on the front. It made sense to employ a useful asset to pick up manifesting psychics before they went nova in a shopping mall or school.

'Oh, that's not the whole story," Alma abruptly said, and Shepard blinked. She continued talking, as though she hadn't just plucked those thoughts from his head like windborne flower petals. "I'm kind of weak in combat."

"You have an Energy rating of eleven, Internal nine, and Manifestation twelve," he replied with a curious frown.

"And a Mental of thirteen, with Empathy at fifteen," she replied, her tone dropping a bit. "You don't have an Empathy rating to begin with, do you?"

"No," Shepard replied, blasting a target.

"Landing in a city is… a sandstorm, Major," she said. "I learned to turn off passive empathy reading on Titan, but that just shut off the worst of the background noise. I can still see and sense everyone around me, in constant motion. And when fighting starts, serious life-or-death combat…."

She paused, and set her pistol down, ending her simulation. Shepard froze his own sim, and turned to meet her eyes. They glowed, even in the white antiseptic light of the frigate's interior illumination.

"Combat is a terrifying experience," she said. "Horror, pain, anger, pants-shitting fear, worry, exhilaration, bloodlust…. all of them run rampant when battle begins, sir. They're hard to lock out completely." She closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her head. "I was observing a team that went after a psychic. A criminal, Energy Five, but he knew how to use it. One of the Sentinel's teammates engaged him, and the psychic burned him alive. Cooked him in his armor. They saved his stack, but….

"I woke up on the deck of the Voidranger, curled up in a ball, two unconscious medics beside me. I'd been catatonic and pissing myself, but I was still pumping out enough unfocused energy that I knocked them out even when they sedated me."

She picked up the pistol and removed its power core, preparing to take it back out and stow it. As she did so, Shepard came to an understanding.

"That's why you have Vega partnered with you," he said, and she nodded, a slight smile suddenly appearing on her face.

"James was part of the team that recruited me," she said. "He and I have been friends since. He was with me during most of my training. He's officially my bodyguard, but unofficially, he helps keep me calm."

"He's… what, your sanity bear?" Shepard asked, and she let out a quiet laugh.

"The grizzly isn't there because of fuzzies, sir," Alma replied. "And emotionally sensitive or not, I'm still an A-tier. I rate a bodyguard."

"An ursa uplift who can pack tank weapons is a hell of a bodyguard," he admitted, and she nodded.

"Just… don't ask him to dance. Especially not talking and dancing at the same time. He'll put you in the infirmary if you try to brawl with him."

"I'll take that under advisement, Lieutenant," Shepard replied.

* * *

><p>The interior of Xin Hengsha's underwater habitat consisted of dozens of linked-together, contractor-assembled structures intermixed in a labyrinth of modules, access corridors, and machinery. Maintenance Corridor 33-A-West was yet another in a long, proud line of dull, boring passages in Xin Hengsha's hulls.<p>

This particular passage was a component of the city's water purification system - both desalination and wastewater filtration. It was mostly automated, with a few civilian workers and security on hand, but they were easily tracked by their mesh implants and the heavily-networked machinery, and Garrus and Alison were able to easily avoid them and bypass the plant's security. Edgar Chen shouldn't have had access to this part of Xin Hengsha's infrastructure either, but that wasn't surprising.

The turian and human moved through the corridor, weapons in hand. Garrus carried a mass accelerator carbine with a quickchange scope that was linked to his optics, letting him move from close-quarters sights to long-range precision at a thought. He wore a suit of dark blue and black tactical armor fitted around his Exo frame, giving him the appearance of a tall, lean turian assault drone with glowing blue eyes. It was an outfit that was quick to attach and disassemble, thankfully; in a pinch he could simply disengage it and run, the pieces falling off his body.

Alison wore dark gray and black mottled armor, heavy and tough and unsubtle; the armor wasn't backed by powered artificial muscle, as her own construction allowed her to get far more force in her movements by herself than anything short of heavy Atlas suits. Aside from a laser pistol and tactical-modded omnitools on both arms, she carried a snub-nosed Tengoku-designed fusion rifle. A deadly weapon in the close quarters they were expecting to fight in, but Garrus didn't like the spread on the fusion rifle's plasma burst, nor was he comfortable with the half-second charge time between shots.

Still, if anyone had the reaction times needed to time their shots correctly, it was her, so he let her take point while he covered their backs.

_Mesh tracking shows he passed through this room seventeen minutes ago,_ she messaged Garrus as they reached a hatch leading into one of the pumping rooms.

_Disler's position hasn't changed?_ Garrus asked, and she shook her head, sliding into position to breach.

_Local mesh isn't showing me anything inside this room,_ she added. _No cameras or other sensors. Spime data is giving me proximity on Disler._

_But not Chen, obviously._ The ubiquitous computers that made up the "mesh" of constantly communicating sensors, detectors, monitoring equipment, spimes, and nodes that served as the infrastructure of modern networks were a crucial tracking tool, but only against people who didn't really have a good grasp of information security. Chen was hiding his presence, spoofing local sensors and mesh communications, but he hadn't done the same for Disler.

Alison waved her omnitool over the locked hatch, and a moment later it hissed faintly, seals releasing. She stepped forward, pushing it open, and Garrus was a step behind her.

The chamber was another pumping room. Long, choked with working machinery, silver-white pipes and gunmetal gray boxes several meters tall. The pulse and hum of running water and working pumps vibrated through the floor, a constant industrial heartbeat. The lights were dim, yellow electronic strips along the ceiling, dark shadows above the pipes criss-crossing overhead.

This was all peripheral. Both Garrus and Alison locked their eyes on the middle of the room, and the bloody corpse hanging from its ankles.

Marshal Disler had died violently, his blood covering the ragged tears along his neck and face, chunks of cut and torn flesh visible on his exposed chest. He hung a few meters into the room, suspended from a pipe overhead. His coat and shirt were ripped open, blood pooling under his head as he slowly swung in a slight arc back and forth.

Between one step and another, Garrus was analyzing the crime scene. Alison stepped to the side, sweeping the room while he went to work.

It wasn't too dissimilar from when Galroon Paavaloorando had gone on his killing spree a few years back, chopping up twelve people on the Citadel while using his diplomatic status to evade detection. He'd strung up the bodies much the same way, although he usually stripped them naked and had used far cleaner cutting tools. According to him, it had been as much about the aftermath as selling the victim's organs. Garrus wasn't sure what the elcor's motivations were beyond that point, as their confrontation had ended in gunfire and a string of explosions.

Dilser's killer - likely Chen but they couldn't rule out someone else - had used vastly cruder tools. Heavy tearing across the cheeks and neck, strips of stringy flesh hanging loose. Mastication and tearing, which meant teeth. Omnivore incisors rather than canines or molars. Human teeth, likely, tearing flesh clear of the body. By comparison, the chest wounds were rough knife hacks, no flesh missing, just peeled back. Some tearing at the back of the neck, where a cortical stack would traditionally be installed.

Garrus checked the floor. Blood trails, thick and bright red, leading from Disler's corpse, and pooling around the body. It was recent, though; not enough for him to have been hanging there for more than a few minutes. A long, wide smear leading a couple of meters away, where rough, random splatters indicated where the biting and chewing had happened. No narrow sprays indicating knife cuts; had the chest wounds been inflicted afterward? There was a wide spray just beyond, consistent with an exit wound from a kinetic weapon, frangible anti-personnel ammunition most likely. Disler had been shot, the killer had chewed and torn the flesh around his face and neck, then dragged him over here and strung him up, before cutting his chest open.

Garrus' eyes tracked up over the human's body. The belt on his pants had been removed, tied around the ankles and looped over the pipe. It was a very fast, very rough job. But it was very clear that the killer wanted the victim to be seen. A display.

But he died so quickly, Garrus reasoned. A killer wanting to display his victim would take longer to-

He froze, and messaged Alison as she was still sweeping the room.

_Disler's corpse is a distraction._

She halted mid-step, right before a blurring form erupted from behind one of the machines, covered in Disler's blood and swinging a heavy metal pipe at the side of her head.

She was already moving as Garrus snapped his rifle up to fire. Her left hand rose as she spun, and red-gold light sprayed outward from her forearm, shaping into a concave shield half a meter across. The hardened kinetic barrier lacked the versatility of normal shields,but it stopped the pipe cold, the metal bending under the impact. Alison was sent stumbling back a couple of steps.

Edgar Chen - it was definitely him, recognizable even with blood covering two-thirds of his face - dropped the pipe as he chased after her, pistol in his other hand and leveled at her head, no longer protected by her shield. Garrus heard the charging of a weapon even as he pulled the trigger.

Alison's fusion rifle erupted in a torrent of blue-white fury, the plasma hitting Chen in the gut at the same time as Garrus' shot struck him in the back of the head. Chen's body spun, stomach vaporizing in a blast of horrifically seared flesh, and blood flying from the back of his head.

And then he bolted toward Alison, smashing down with the butt of his pistol, glowing metal visible in his abdomen where the fusion rifle had burned away skin. Metal also gleamed in the back of his head where Garrus had shot him.

Another human aug. Great.

The butt of the pistol smashed down into Alison's rifle, denting the casing and knocking the weapon down before the could fire it again. She twisted, shifting her center of gravity, and her shield blurred upward into Chen's throat. The kinetic barrier didn't have any mass of its own, but the edge still carried the force of her blow into his neck. Flesh parted, and the augmented human's body went stumbling backward and blood flew from his throat.

Garrus shot him again in the back, this time with armor-piercing ammunition. Blood erupted from Chen's upper chest, followed by something paler and clear, and he stumbled again, nearly falling to his knees. Alison bolted toward him, dropping the damaged fusion rifle while red light shaped over her right arm into an omniblade.

Chen abruptly leapt straight up, letting out a ragged cry of pain and anger that sounded nothing like a human. As he moved, Garrus could see that his stomach was gone, leaving blackened flesh around augmented artificial muscle and spine, both of which were burned and glowing yellow-white from the fusion rifle's blast.

The augmented human reached a pipe cluster overhead in the darkness, and Garrus shot him in the lower back as he clambered up. Chen grunted, sparks flying and a chunk of metal exploding out of his front, and then kicked off, leaping half a dozen meters across the room to another group of pipes.

Garrus put a round through his eye in mid-leap.

More sparks, more blood, and more screams. Chen hit the top of the pipes, clambering with graceless speed, arms and legs a vicious, desperate blur. Garrus spotted a ventilation grating along the wall a heartbeat before Chen reached up and tore the cover free with his bare hands. The Exo fired again, a fifth booming shot that hit Chen in the leg as he bolted through the grating, leaving a trail of blood and transparent conductive fluid.

"Damn human augs," the turian muttered, covering the vent with his rifle. At least this one hadn't killed him.

_Alison?_ he messaged.

_I'm okay,_ she replied_. Gun's wrecked.. Didn't expect him to be synthetic aug'd. That was military-grade. Haven't seen anything short of a Replica Heavy take that kind of abuse._

_Vahlenite chassis,_ Garrus sent. _Only way he survived a point-blank fusion rifle blast._

_Yeah. Hold on a sec._ He spared a glance, keeping his scope locked on the vent, to see her rummaging through something made of burnt synthetic cloth on the floor. Not Disler's clothes, but part of Chen's dockworker uniform. After a moment, she stood, holding something small, about the size of a grape. It had a hardened casing blackened by the close brush of her fusion rifle.

_Disler's cortical stack_, Garrus suggested, and she nodded. He glanced back toward the grisly scene, and then toward the door.

_We won't catch him in the city's ventilation systems,_ he sent, and she replied in a wordless affirmative.

_Xin Hengsha police are going to come down like wildfire in a few minutes,_ she replied, grabbing her weapon and stowing it._ Weapon discharge sensors. Clear out. We'll analyze later and pick up his trail, if he survives that kind of abuse._

He sent and affirmative, and the pair hurried out of the room, navigating through the maze of access passages and corridors to get clear of the site before the police locked it down. Within less than a couple of minutes, they were clear of the processing plant; less than two minutes afterward they were back in civilian clothes and were ghosts once more.

* * *

><p>Strike Four and <em>Market Garden<em> exited faster-than-light over Proteus, the former an assembly of dozens of warships including five light carriers and a dreadnought-sized heavy carrier, the _XCS Honjo Masamune._ They entered orbit, sliding in position so that when the PPA taskforce transitioned in a few minutes later, XCOM stood between them and the SDC blockade, a force of close to seventy lighter ships - mostly frigates and light cruisers - supported by a pair of heavy SDC carriers and nine heavy cruisers.

If it came to blows, the carriers would likely jump out to the edge of the system and deploy waves of drones and fighters while the warships held the orbital space itself. The skies over Proteus would be busy.

The standard challenges and acknowledgements were sent between all sides, followed by the standard canned accusations and veiled threats whenever an international incident was brewing. Shepard waited impatiently through it all before the SDC finally sent an acknowledgement to XCOM's fleet that their investigators were cleared for entry. Technically, XCOM could have just sent their teams down without waiting for clearance - they had the authority coupled with SDC requests for assistance - but technical authority didn't defend against actual laser beams or fusion lances fired by some jumpy commander.

Shepard's team, consisting of himself, Garm, Vega, Alma, and Sergeant McTavish' tactical squad, loaded onto their Voidranger and descended through the SDC blockade. They all wore tactical armor, save Shepard and Alma, who wore their uniform psi-cloaks over their personal armor, and Garm, who wore a set of lightweight current-gen Ghost armor which looked more like a full-body black turtleneck with ballistic weave and vahlenite plating underneath the cloth. The thick "neck" portion of the armor concealed a fast-deploy helmet, although Shepard knew he hated wearing it because it bothered his whiskers and pressed in on his ears.

The humans sat in their crash chairs, strapped in, while Vega lay on the floor in the middle of the dropship, strapped down like a pallet of cargo. Garm was secured in his own chair with multiple straps, ears tucked back and tail poking out nearly straight beneath his body.

"The kitten hates zero-g," McTavish said at Alma's curious expression. "Either he stays strapped in during the transition from ship to surface, or he goes nutters bouncing around."

"I thought cats would be at home in a low-gravity environment," she asked.

"Low gravity: yes," Garm yowled. "Zero gravity: _Fuck. That. Noise._ These damn power-saving measures are total bullshit."

"We'll be through the blockade in a few minutes," Shepard said, reviewing data feeds from the Masamune's intelligence and liaison teams. "Make sure your translators are updated, we'll be hitting Xin Hengsha's main surface port."

A quick chorus of affirmatives or annoyed curses followed, the latter accompanied by quick patches.

The minutes passed, and the pilot announced entry. The Voidranger began to vibrate as it passed through the atmosphere, hull heating up, and Garm relaxed as gravity began to reassert itself.

"Keep seated and watch your heads," Shepard called over the shaking noise of the dropship's passage. "There's a storm right over Xin Hengsha's main port."

Everyone braced themselves, the Voidranger shifting back and forth. The vibrations intensified, and a hiss of pouring rain ran through the dropship. Twice the Voidranger's direction shifted abruptly as winds struck it, followed by yowls and mutterings of anxiety. Hostile landings were never fun, whether it was under enemy fire or unpleasant weather, but Shepard was comforted by the fact that they'd be able to at least breathe if they crashed on this planet - though floating was a more serious issue.

The shaking from the storm subsided after several minutes, and the Voidranger began to descend, though rain continued to wash over the dropship. Checking the outside feeds showed a dark gray expanse overhead, blurred by a constant downpour, with a choppy gray blanket below them, save for a metallic dome emerging from the ocean's surface. As the Voidranger dropped toward it, a circular hole irised open, wide enough to accommodate a cruiser-sized bulk freighter, and the XCOM dropship descended into the cavernous bay.

"Hell of a setup they got," Vega commented as they dropped into the submarine docking facility. A series of circular platforms ran the edge of the enormous chamber, with docking spars and cradles reaching out to accommodate dozens of freighters and smaller ships, many at about one to two hundred meters in length but easily held in the enormous cradles. The entire dome was at least four kilometers across at the lowest level, which was itself about the same length from the entry gateway at the top of the bay. A guidance drone rose up to meet the Voidranger, leading it down through the rings of docked ships. Small cargo carriers and drone buzzed about the rings, either running maintenance on the freighter fleet or hauling materials between ships and loading platforms.

"Standard hanar design," Alma said, her eyes marked by that distracted look of someone checking local databases. "Looks like the contracted a lot of hanar corporations for underwater construction. Makes sense. Second highest local population is hanar, followed by asari and drell."

"I'm going to be so damn hungry down there," Vega whined as the Voidranger came in to dock. "Squid everywhere."

"Same," Garm added as he unstrapped himself.

"Gotta have some killer seafood, though," Vega said. "Major, we gonna book some nice restaurants before we leave this world."

"I'll consider it," Shepard replied. "Make the trip worthwhile." Beyond, well, averting an interstellar cold war from going hot.

A couple of minutes and quick internal decontamination sweep later, and the entry ramp slid open. The ten XCOM agents started down the ramp onto a wide landing platform that dwarfed the Voidranger. Dockworkers in blue and yellow coveralls, some with power assist frames or mechanical augs, were bustling back and forth with crates or cargo platforms. Drones zipped overhead by the dozens, cylindrical machines a couple of meters in length with spindly arms that grasped cargo and lifted it into the chaos overhead or below.

The only person not carrying or coordinating the activity stood a few meters from the Voidranger's ramp, a tall, slim, young-looking man in the dark blue and gray uniform of Xin Hengsha's police. His hands - the only part of his arms visible beneath his coat's sleeves - were gunmetal augmentations, and his eyes were hidden behind a wraparound visor of the same color, wires connecting to ports in his temples. His skin was pale - his current body was likely derived from Asian genetic stock - and his short hair dark, mostly hidden under a beret. He wore a pistol on his hip but had no other visible weaponry.

"Major Shepard?" he asked, stepping forward and extending a hand. Shepard took it, and found a hard, unyielding grip. The officer's face was locked in a dour, professional frown, and it matched his tone. "Lieutenant Victor Han, Xin Hengsha Internal Security. I have been assigned as your team's liaison for this investigation."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," Shepard replied, and turned to introduce his . "This is my team: Lieutenant Garm, my partner. Lieutenant Alma Wade, special PsiCorps attachment. Her bodyguard, Lieutenant James Vega." He pointed further back. "Sergeant McTavish, leader of my tactical team."

"You have a bear, I see," Han said, his frown expanding by a couple of millimeters. He clearly disliked having ten heavily-armed people who he didn't have full authority over on his pressurized, submerged city. "If you will come with me, I can take you to accommodations."

"We need to meet with the head of your current investigation team," Shepard said as he followed the dour-face policeman across the platform. A heavy cargo platform was descending at the far end of the platform, nearly a dozen dockworkers stepping off and carrying fueling equipment for the Voidranger.

"Yes, sir," Han replied, unenthusiastic. "I will set up a meeting as soon as possible."

"The faster you get this done, the faster we can complete the investigation and be gone," Shepard offered, and Han nodded. His frown faded slightly, but he kept walking without directly looking at them. The dockworkers passed around the XCOM personnel, one shouting to bring a set of fuel cells off the platform. "How much do you know about why we're here?"

"I am cleared," Han replied. "I would not be a useful liaison if I were not."

"Then you know the stakes here," Shepard insisted, and glanced back to his team and the dockworkers walking past. He was about to continue when he noticed something.

Alma had her head cocked to the side, eyebrows knitted, glowing eyes distant and distracted.

_Lieutenant?_ he messaged her, and her eyes snapped back toward him.

_They're screaming,_ she replied. _The workers are screaming for help._

Shepard's blood went cold, and his hand went for his sidearm.

He saw the workers behind them, surrounding the XCOM team, and one of them was reaching for something inside his coat. The handle of a weapon became visible.

_Hostiles!_ he messaged the team right as one of the workers spun, face twisting in sudden fury and determination, and he drew a high-frequency knife from his belt pouch and lunged toward one of the tactical troopers. The man whirled, right as the blade plunged into his stomach, the weapon screaming as it ripped into the vahlenite plating in a shower of sparks.

Shepard channeled psionic power through his body, and the world around him _slowed_. He could see everything in precise, slow-motion detail, swift and frantic movement becoming almost comical flailing, with everyone moving through thickened gel. The panels around his head slid into place with a drawn-out series of clicks as his helmet deployed, each part sliding out and locking together. When the visor finished moving into place there was an agonizing moment of pitch-black darkness before his HUD activated, the external microcameras lighting up and painting the inside of his helmet with a high-resolution holographic display of his surroundings.

He counted eleven dock workers turning to attack the XCOM team, seven carrying pistols and four with melee weapons: two armed high-frequency knives and the others deploying omniblades. Most were behind the tactical team, but four of them - one with an omniblade, another a knife, and the last two drawing kinetic pistols - were close to Shepard's squad.

And all of them were going straight for Alma, whose face was twisted in a mixture of surprise and horror, though she wasn't even looking at their attackers.

_Puppet socks,_ she messaged, the data reaching Shepard instantly in spite of his sped-up perceptions.

_Non-lethal if possible!_ Shepard ordered even as he leapt toward one of the blade-wielders.

If these men were fitted with puppet sock implants, it meant they not in control of their own bodies - and their own lack of control was the source of Alma's "screaming." His legs rose as he reached the closest puppet, and his feet pumped in a flying double-kick that hammered the man in the chest and forehead. The blows lifted the worker up and launched him backward into a spinning, slow-motion tumble, and Shepard landed in a crouch as the man fell.

He spun toward Alma in slow motion, pistol rising, and saw her arms spreading outward, purple light erupting around her in a circle. Shepard could see the psionic power expanding and shaping into flat planes, and then abruptly snapping into a three-meter wide dome of transparent, shimmering purple light, a heartbeat before two pistols fired and kinetic rounds exploded against the barrier.

The second blade-wielding worker rushed into the barrier, slowing as he struck it and pushing into it. It functioned like an element zero-generated kinetic barrier: fast-moving objects were repelled, but slower and larger ones could move through it. The worker managed to get halfway through the barrier before a massive arm clamped over his shoulder, and James Vega casually yanked the worker free. The man spun, swinging his blade at the bear, but his other arm shot forward, catching the man's wrist and snapping it with a twist, the sound sickening and drawn-out in the slow-motion reality Shepard was experiencing. The blade fell free, and Vega slugged him lightly in the face, sending him toppling to the floor.

One of the pistol-carrying puppets was turning to shoot Vega. Shepard prioritized him, rushing toward the puppet while he still had enough focus to maintain his speed. His left hand dropped to his belt and drew an arc thrower, and he snapped it up and fired it into the man's back. White lightning slashed and played over the man's body, and he jerked violently, screaming with involuntary spasms.

But he didn't go down, not until Shepard body-checked him, looped an arm around the worker's waist, and spun, hip-tossing him into the deck. A second blast with the arc thrower left him a twitching, unconscious heap.

Shepard looked up, pain flaring in his temples as the power flowing through him took its toll. He released the power before it got too intense, and time reverted to normal. Sound sped back up, snapping to normal speeds, and he heard a man's jabbering scream, accompanied by a sizzle of electricity. The fourth worker attacking Alma went down in a heap, and Garm hopped on top of the body in a low crouch, clutching his own arc thrower.

Shepard turned toward the rest of his team, in time to see the last dockworker collapse in a burst of electricity. One of McTavish's soldiers was down and bleeding badly even through his armor, and another was clutching a serious wound in his flank, but none were lethally injured. Puppeted dockworkers littered the pavement around them, arms and legs broken or collapsed in arc-thrower-induced heaps. Lightly augmented civilians against armored and augmented XCOM troopers was a terribly unfair matchup.

Lieutenant Han was staring at them, his frown replaced by a slightly opened mouth, a sidearm in hand and confusion in the features that were visible. He might have been a cop, but he'd likely never seen an XCOM team in action; the entire confrontation had ended in a couple of seconds.

"Backup!" Shepard barked at the man, and the policeman nodded, snapping out of his shock. Shepard checked his team as Han called for assistance, and saw that McTavish had ordered the unwounded troopers into a defensive perimeter.

Within her barrier, Alma had fallen to her knees, clutching the sides of her head and panting. Shepard pushed against it and stepped inside.

"Wade, are you hurt?" he asked, and she shook her head.

"Still screaming. Origin. Transmission through the puppets." She looked up, shivering,and abruptly a set of distant contacts on his AR display were highlighted: a group of workers a level above and about a hundred meters away, their mesh implants clearly identified as they automatically communicated with the spimes and nodes surrounding them. Four people, three marked orange and one a bright red.

"The red one is controlling them," she hissed.

_Garm, with me,_ Shepard sent, bouncing that information to his team._ Vega, McTavish, stay with Wade!_

Then he sped himself up again, _slowing_ the world around him, and bolted toward the distant targets.

They were up on the next cargo level, halfway between this one and the next docking port, putting them about fifty meters overhead and another seventy away laterally. The puppet-master and his hapless minions were standing on a balcony-like ring that extended about thirty meters into the bay from the dome's wall, where cargo was collected for transport or sorting. It was a good spot to observe the ambush from, and no doubt they had also seen its spectacular failure and the pair of Sentinels rushing toward them.

If Shepard had an Archangel pack - or better, a fully-equipped set of Zephyr armor - he could have simply flown straight up toward the puppet-master. But he only wore lower-profile powered armor, which meant he would have to rely on lower-tech tricks and his own psionics.

He poured power through his body as he ran, watching for the wide-bellied automated cargo haulers moving back and forth overhead, oblivious to the brief burst of violence below. Shepard saw his opportunity, and lifted his arm, activating the standard-issue grappling hook hidden within the armor. It was a miniaturized version of the ones carried by recon and tactical armor variants, with a shorter range, but it came in handy for Sentinels. The gauntlet's top panel folded back, exposing the launcher tube, and it fired the small clawed plug.

It slammed into one of the overhead haulers, an element zero core powering and creating a mass effect field that let the claw adhere to the target. Shepard retracted himself up the short line toward the hauler, and as he reached the airborne machine, he sent another surge of power through his body and hauled himself up onto the hauler's side while recovering his grapple. The machine was little more than a platform with thrusters and an element zero core, directed by a simple VI program and carrying strapped-down pallets of cargo, so he was easily able to climb over the boxes to get a clear shot at the platforms overhead. The quartet of workers that Alma had marked were already turning to run, and he quickly lined up his grappling claw and fired again, yanking himself toward the next level.

He coiled his legs underneath his body, twisting toward the platform, and his boots hit just below the safety railing, free hand grabbing hold. Another surge of power, and he flipped up and over the railing, landing in a crouch, drawing his sidearm, the tails of his coat pooling around him.

Garm, naturally, had managed to beat him there, crouching a few meters away with a compact plasma pistol in hand, ears pulled back. The platform was littered with boxes, enormous shipping containers, and several parked haulers, their cargo left unattended as workers scattered from the gunfire below.

_What kept you?_ the cat asked, as they both bolted toward the retreating workers.

Shepard didn't answer, because the orange-marked puppets were lifting short-barrelled, matte gray carbines with glowing green lines, and pointing them at the pair of Sentinels.

They broke in opposite directions, Shepard pouring more energy through his body, Garm using his size and agility. Plasma sizzled toward them in narrow, roiling green beams, sickly light bathing the platform and burning into pavement and cargo pallets.

_Non-lethal!_ Shepard messaged, switching his sidearm to low-power and narrow-beam modes.

_You're damn well joking,_ Garm sent back, but it was tinged with as much amusement as annoyance, and he weaved between the boxes and crates as the puppets sprayed plasma indiscriminately toward the pair. They used their armors' tactical network and sensors to map out the mess of crates and containers and track the puppets, who were backing away and sweeping plasma fire back and forth while their controller ran for a cargo hauler.

_No joke,_ Shepard replied. _No guarantee they'll have stacks if someone's puppeting them. XCOM will foot their medical bills._

Shepard emerged from behind a crate to the left of one of the puppets, omnitool assembling a stun grenade and plasma pistol in hand. He fired the grenade as he rounded the container, helmet automatically compensating as the stunner blew up in the puppet's face. He screamed, the tail-end of the cry coming in through Shepard's audio sensors, the man clutching his eyes and stumbling backward.

Shepard _slowed_, lined up his targets, and fired two quick pairs of shots. Green beams burned through the puppet's kneecaps and elbows, turning them to charred flesh and bone. He toppled, crying out in started agony, his arms and legs abruptly useless. Shepard moved past the thrashing puppet, zapping him with his arc thrower. The man would live, with his wounds being cauterized by the plasma.

The Sentinel looked back up, and his overlays showed the marked puppet-master about twenty meters away, reaching the cargo hauler and waving an arm toward the controls.

_He's escaping!_ Shepard messaged, pouring more power into his body and ignoring the intensifying headache. He leapt up atop one of the containers in a psionic-fueled jump, grappling hook deploying again. He heard another puppet cry in pain over a burst of electricity.

_Get him,_ Garm sent back._ I'll take this last one and cover you!_

The hauler started lifting off, and Shepard launched. His grapple hit the vehicle's railing and locked in, and the Sentinel retracted, flying up toward it. He hit the side of the hauler and kicked up over the railing, plasma pistol raised and tracking.

The puppet-master was a completely ordinary-looking human: average-length brown hair, plain features, medium build and height, brown stubble, unmarked dockworker blues. The man was so unremarkable that Shepard wouldn't have been able to spot him in a crowd without assistance from a psychic or computer.

The blurring speed at which he crossed the ten-meter wide hauler platform and drove a fist into Shepard's helmet was _quite_ remarkable, however.

Shepard saw it coming, an instant before his knuckles impacted the helmet, and the Sentinel poured power into his body, _slowing_ everything and letting him twist aside and spin with the blow. A ringing impact of augmented bone and flesh struck the edge of Shepard's helm, and he stumbled backward, gritting his teeth through the pain lancing through his temples.

The puppet-master whirled, and Shepard saw a flicker of purple light around the man's shoulders and eyes as he lashed out again, a vicious sidekick that hit the Sentinel's gun hand right as he fired. Plasma exploded against the puppet-master's boot, incinerating the shoe, his lower pants leg, and the foot underneath.

The blow still hit hard enough to send a numbing spasm up Shepard's arm even through his armor, and knocked the pistol loose. The puppet-master lunged at Shepard, hands wrapping around his neck and shoving him back against the railing. The metallic skeleton of a foot, smoking and twisted from the plasma blast, extended from the ruins of the man's leg.

_Internal psionic!_ Shepard messaged, grunting and grabbing the puppet-master's arms at the wrists._ Heavily aug'd!_

_Give me a couple of seconds!_ Garm replied.

The puppet-master's fingers were inhumanly strong, but Shepard's armor was designed with that in mind. The artificial muscle beneath the armored fabric stiffened in response, keeping the man's fingers from crushing Shepard's windpipe. He forced more power through his body, the pain cutting through his temples, gripped the puppet-master's wrists, and then twisted and wrenched as hard as he could.

Something important snapped under his grip, and the pressure on his neck lessened. He threw his arms out, doing the same to the puppet-master' s hands, and brought his right arm back down to his side, balling it into a fist. He stepped forward, driving his hand up into his foe's chest with sufficient speed to trigger kinetic barriers.

A blue-tinged mass effect field rippled into existence around Shepard's forearm, while a more solid, concave barrier formed over his fingers and knuckles. As an Internal who could enhance his speed, Shepard could strike so swiftly that even with armor and his own powers strengthening his body, he ran the risk of breaking his own arms when he punched at full power. His omnitool and suit's mass effect projectors were modified to assist in that regard: the gauntlets formed a dual-layer kinetic barrier, with the outer barrier protecting his hand from the impact, and the inner barrier providing a cushioning layer to absorb the force from the blow.

Something within the puppet-master's torso gave way before Shepard's shimmering blue uppercut, and the man was hurled backward among an expanding blue cloud as the barriers collapsed. He slammed into the railing on the opposite side of the platform, a screech of bent metal accompanying the collision.

Shepard exhaled, and crouched, picking up his pistol from where it had fallen. He glanced to the side, over the railing, and saw that the hauler was still rising, about twenty meters up and climbing. He quickly found the remote controls for the hauler with a short range scan, and reversed the orders to send it back toward the floor below.

_Fistfight on a flying platform? Feel's like my life's a bad action movie,_ Shepard thought, turning toward the puppet-master, who was pushing himself up to his feet. Blood soaked the front of his overalls, and Shepard could see rips and bloody fabric sticking to the point in his chest where he'd been punched. He must have ruptured something important.

"Stay down," Shepard ordered, pointing his pistol at the augmented human. "This will only get-"

The puppet-master bolted toward him, an ungainly blur of bloody flesh and mechanical augs, and Shepard _slowed_ again, ignoring the spikes of pain driving into his skull. He switched to maximum power as the blurring cyborg became merely stupidly fast, and squeezed the trigger. A roiling column of plasma as thick as Shepard's arm lashed out, burning into the cyborg's center of mass, searing flesh and burning away his clothes.

He barely reacted, charging straight through the plasma and slamming into Shepard with his shoulder leading. The crash of augmented flesh and armor sent them both hurtling toward the railing.

"Shepard, I'm here!" Garm shouted as his grappling hook carried him toward the hauler. He clambered up onto the platform, pistol in hand, right as the Sentinel and puppet-master went over the side past him.

"Oh. Well, _balls_."

For a heartstopping moment, Shepard and his opponent hung in the air, dropping toward the cargo level below. Then the Sentinel snapped his left arm up and fired his grappling hook again, striking the underside of the hauler and yanking himself away from the falling aug. A moment later, the puppet-master hit the deck below with a crash and a faint splurch of crushed meat.

Hanging from the underside of the platform, Shepard leveled his weapon at the augmented human below, who was pushing himself to his feet, a mess of burnt flesh and exposed cybernetic parts.

_Garm, nonlethal,_ Shepard ordered.

_I'll get the arms,_ Garm replied, and both Sentinels opened fire, shooting the puppet-master in the knees, elbows, and shoulders. Narrow plasma beams cut into the cyborg, piercing and melting joints, and a couple of seconds and nine shots later, he was flopping on the deck. By that time, the hauler was low enough that Shepard could safely release his grapple and drop to the floor.

"McTavish," he spoke into his radio as he and Garm strode toward the twitching body. "All clear down there?"

"Yeah, we've got a perimeter, wounded are stabilized, sir," came the reply. "Lieutenant Wade's stable, too."

"Good," Shepard said as they reached the cyborg. "Lieutenant Han? I need these docks locked the fuck down."

"I will do so," the policeman replied quickly, and Shepard could hear how out of his depth the man was in his voice.

The cyborg was still trying to move, and had managed to roll onto his back. He was glaring blades at the two Sentinels looming over him even while slowly flopping away from them on nonfunctional limbs, molten and twisted metal poking out from the ruined ends. His flesh was mostly blackened or burned clear off, but his eyes were still intact and gleamed with a vicious intellect.

Shepard pointed his pistol at the cyborg and fired, drilling a beam straight through the torso. All movement ceased instantly, and the body fell to the deck, life fading from his eyes.

"I thought we were doing nonlethal," Garm mused.

"Something like this thing?" Shepard replied, shaking his head. "This is nonlethal."

Shepard crouched over the body, reopening his channel to McTavish.

"McTavish, get a containment unit here from the Masamune," he said, setting his plasma pistol to low yield, and jammed it into the puppet-master's neck. "Full sweep team. And I need a cranial freezer, off the Voidranger," he added.

"For what?" McTavish asked, and Shepard pulled the trigger three times, drawing the pistol across the body's neck. He planted a foor on the cyborg's chest pulled hard, grunting with the effort, and the puppet-master's ruined head came free.

"I've got a brain I need Lieutenant Wade to examine," he muttered.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Codex - Weapons and Armor - Fusion Rifle<em>**

_Contact with humanity presented the Citadel with a previously-unseen set of technologies, including practical, humanoid-portable energy weaponry. While the Citadel was quick to adopt laser weaponry, they found a significant difficulty in adapting plasma weapons due to their reliance on elerium, a material that could only be produced in limited amounts by human psionics. Asari attempts at mimicking human methods proved ineffective, and existing power generation technology could not produce the enormous requirements needed to make man-portable plasma weapons viable._

_The Turian Hierarchy, working with human engineers, was able to develop a workaround to the elerium limitation using high-capacity sealed hydrogen power cells. The subsequent system lacked the long-range coherence of an elerium-based plasma weapon, and required half a second to fully charge before firing, but could still produce a large, devastating burst of high-energy plasma that proved even more destructive at short range than an elerium-fueled weapon, and also in a much more compact package._

_These "fusion rifles" have proven extremely popular as alternative close-quarters weapons, and have found extensive use alongside alloy-penetrators and shotguns in armories across the galaxy. Despite their limited magazine capacity - usually only able to fire three to five shots before reloading - fusion rifles have become the weapon of choice for soldiers and mercenaries expecting close combat with augmented opponents, synthetics, and krogan._

**_Codex - Technology - Puppet Sock_**

_Originally developed as a device to control a criminal population in maximum security prisons, puppet socks are neural implants that allow an authorized "puppeteer" to remotely control an organic's body, either through an uploaded mind or fork in a ghostrider module or remote control via radio, mesh, laser, or other communication device. humane" variants of puppet sock technology automatically render their "puppet" unconscious when activated, allowing the remote operator to move their puppet to a secure location. Cheaper or simply more cruel puppet socks allow their puppets full sensory input while the puppeteer controls their bodies._

_Puppet sock technology is tightly regulated in Citadel space, and only authorized agencies are allowed to use them. Extensive paperwork and very strict medical examination is required before the device can be installed, and they are rarely implanted in fully self-aware beings outside of prisons except in specific cases such as individuals with uncontrollable mental ailments that could render them a danger to themselves or their surroundings. Organic weapons systems such as Replica soldiers are also outfitted with puppet socks to allow them to be remote controlled by a central commander in situations where normal control methods such as voice operation are unavailable._

* * *

><p><strong><em>Author's Notes:<em>**Fusion rifles are a piece of tech from Destiny. Puppet socks are Eclipse Phase technology, and a particularly nasty one at that.


	10. Chapter Eight: Operation NEPTUNE DAGGER

**Broker File BA-00299814-4113-AL**

**Recording: Drone download of recording from Hoplite Security LLC Contractor "Alison Young" and Garrus Vakarian**

**Recording occurred after simulspace interview with Armacham Technology Corporation Vice President Marshal Dishler's ego from recovered cortical stack after his murder by "Edgar Chen" (see attached files on contacts, aliases, psionic screening on "Metzirov")**

**Begin recording:**

**Alison Young:** Holy shit you colossal _fucking_ morons.

**End Recording**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Chapter Eight: Operation: Neptune Dagger<strong>_

"I was killed again, wasn't I?"

Marshal Disler wore the same suit he'd been wearing right before he had been shot. A quick check of his body showed that it pretty solidly matched his build and outfit from when he'd been abducted, dragged into the bowels of the shithole colony whose projects he'd been put in charge of, and then shot in the back. The room was a pure white cube or sphere - hard to tell because it was impossible to make out where the walls were - with a simple black metal table in the center, and two black metal chairs for Disler and the woman to sit at.

The woman was made of solid black, reflective metal. The avatar was vaguely feminine, but utterly featureless - a womanly shape but no clothing or hair or anything visible beyond mirror-smooth blackness. At least she had a pleasant voice. Cold, but pleasant.

So, the usual debriefing setup.

"Yes, you were, Mister Disler," the woman replied. "You were killed by this man." She waved a metal hand, and a picture of the body that his killer had been wearing appeared: a dockworker with a generic Asian gene stock.

"His name is Edgar Chen," she continued.

"The name of the poor bastard he killed, you mean," Disler replied. The woman did not reply directly, instead continuing to talk.

"Unfortunately, our cleanup team was unable to rescue you before he killed you. We were able to injure him and recover your cortical stack, although your body had been severely damaged. We'll have to get you sleeved into a new one, but before we can do that I need to debrief you on the entire incident."

"Of course you do," Disler said, sighing. He idly reached out with his senses across the simulspace environment, pushing against it to see how much he could read from it, but it was closed off entirely. He knew that he was unlikely to change that even with his rank and power; Armacham's cleanup units were very strict and had their own chain of command.

Of course, that was assuming that this really was an ATC debriefing. He could be talking to the very person who killed him right now, trying to glean more information out of him. Though…. there were more direct ways of getting that knowledge, assuming the psychic was willing to get messy. The idea set his virtual stomach turning.

"So, how do you want to handle this?" Disler asked, testing them. "Should I walk us through the entire process of what happened? Or just what happened to me after the Synchronicity Event?"

"Our concern is cleanup," the woman said. "How many escaped the site, and who let them loose?"

"All three intact Commanders managed to escape," Disler said, leaning back, satisfied with that response. Cleanup really only had one job, and stayed focused on that. One of the escapees would have been asking more probing questions, trying to find out where the other projects were or digging for corporate knowledge.

"Fortunately, going by the reports," he continued, "it looks like all their intact Replica were destroyed during the escape, so we've only got three psychics to hunt down. If SDC can keep their blockade going at any rate."

"That is good news," the debriefer said with a nod. "Who set them loose? Was it an internal uprising or an external attack?"

"Honestly, we're not sure," Disler said with a shake of his head. "But I believe it was external. Someone breached the security, did something to the Commanders, drove them insane, or at least turned them violent. And they broke free, turned their replica against the security, and ripped everything apart. Fortunately, the two Beta units were barely sane to start with. One of them must have possessed or completely sleeved into the body that attacked me. The other one shouldn't be difficult to find."

Disler sighed, shaking his head.

"The real danger is the Alpha. Paxton Fettel. If we don't kill or contain him quickly, as well as whoever set him loose, the entire colony is likely to sink. Along with us."

* * *

><p>The <em>XCS Honjo Masamune<em> was a fully-equipped XCOM carrier, and the organization's doctrine still held to using the carriers as the long-range control and support centers of their fleets. That also meant that they continued to maintain the numerous support facilities an XCOM fleet demanded, which included containment and interrogation chambers.

Interrogating a disconnected brain - at least in an XCOM ship - was a rarity, but it wasn't unheard of. This one was protected by the standard cyborg armored shell and an internal unit that encased and maintained the brain, resembling a white eggshell with a "tail" section for the brain stem and a synthetic spinal column. The Intelligence team had already hooked the brain up to a set of standard life support tanks and direct-access feeds to its sensory input plugs once they're managed to extract it from the head Shepard had severed.

"Are you ready for this, Lieutenant?" Shepard asked as they stood on the observation deck, safely removed from the interrogation chamber, and watched the Intelligence team prepare to start the interrogation. The whole of his unit was present: Garm, Vega,, and Wade. The cat was lounging in an unoccupied chair, watching them with a lazy, anticipatory eye, while the bear loomed behind Alma, not quite making physical contact. Alma herself was staring at the case containing the puppet-master's organic brain.

"Yes, Major, I am," she said with a nod, glowing eyes locked on the brain.

"You went catatonic down there," Shepard said, and she nodded.

"It comes with the territory, sir," she replied. "I am a high-rated Empath. But I'm no wilting flower, sir." That last part was delivered with a firm conviction. "I was able to defend myself."

"Good," Shepard replied, satisfied by that answer. Conventional psionic combat doctrine held to protect Empaths, but he reminded himself that for all of her sensitivity, Alma had kept enough presence of mind to a crucial asset when thing turned bloody.

"Besides, reading a brain in a controlled environment is far different from being surrounded by thousands of minds at once, several of them screaming for help," she added. She turned and found a chair, and settled down into it, closing her eyes. She inhaled, held it for a few moments, and exhaled. "Let's get started."

_Our Empath is ready, Captain,_ Shepard messaged. Begin.

The popular perception of XCOM was that they resorted to torture and coercion first when dealing with alien prisoners, popularized by endless movies and serials about their exploits after the Ethereal War. The reality was that XCOM attempted to use more effective and proven methods that were far less horrific, but the Ethereals' minions had such a literally alien mindset that those techniques were completely ineffective. XCOM's interrogators had then resorted to invasive surgeries and neural stimulation, along with even more destructive methods, simply to get viable information from them.

By comparison, the interrogation of this brain was straightforward. It was a normal human brain, as far as those went, so when it was awakened it was fed neural stimuli approximating a false environment. The interrogators would then begin interacting with the captive brain. It wasn't too different from questioning a saved brain-state on a cortical stack in a simulspace environment, although it required quite a bit more equipment and care to keep the brain alive.

The process started out normally: the interrogation team asked the usual set of questions, while biomonitors read the physical and chemical reactions from the prisoner's responses, and Alma observed emotional patterns and psionic readings. The prisoner refused to respond to any questions, obviously, and after a few minutes Shepard started pacing from boredom. If he had a choice he wouldn't be here to begin with, as interrogation was not a pleasant experience for anyone. Everything interesting could be summed up in a report, and the entire procedure was either boring questions or stomach-churning nightmare fuel. But a Sentinel or approved Intelligence officer had to be present for official XCOM interrogations, both to monitor the assigned Empath and observe the procedures, and Alma was his responsibility.

After the first ten minutes of the one-sided conversation, Garm had curled up and fallen asleep, Vega was lounging on the floor next to Alma, and Shepard glanced to the Empath as she sat, eyes closed. He noticed her sitting ramrod straight, gloved hands clenched.

"Lieutenant?" he asked. She exhaled, and shook her head.

_Shhh. Sir._

He went silent, and resumed his pacing. He checked with his muse for updates from the ground teams, and found a message from Captain Anderson: apparently the attack on Shepard's team had prompted an upgrade to the investigation, turning it into a full-on XCOM mission, codenamed Operation NEPTUNE DAGGER. Several platoons of XCOM troopers, plus several dozen Intelligence agents, were being deployed to the Xin Hengsha colony to assist in the investigation, and predictably the local government was throwing an obstructionist fit over it.

Shepard kept pacing, and checked on Alma every few minutes. As the interrogation proceeded in its steady, plodding way, she became gradually more and more distressed, sitting up straighter, lips pressed together more tightly, and hands clenching. At about thirty minutes into the session, she abruptly pulled one hand free and held it down at her side. Vega immediately shuffled over, letting her put her hand on his massive head, and she relaxed after a few moments.

Forty-five minutes into the thoroughly unresponsive questioning, she opened her eyes.

_Can we halt the session please?_ she messaged, and the interrogators immediately ceased. Alma slowly rose to her feet, shaking her head and massaging the sides of her temples.

"What did you get from it?" Shepard asked, concern creeping into his voice.

"Its not human," she murmured.

"Come again?" Shepard said, raising an eyebrow. "We already checked its DNA."

"Yes, and biologically, it is human," she replied. "But the mind inhabiting that brain _isn't_. Its not an AI or VI either. The thought processes weren't human, or anything I could recognize."

Shepard frowned, looking back to the containment cell. There did exist specially-modified human brains that allowed nonhumans to sleeve into a human body (and vice versa), but those were relatively new and rare; most often one found those being used by the stupidly wealthy or someone who wanted to "surf" through different bodies to see how a turian or elcor lived. Trying to sleeve an ego into a brain of another species without it being modified for alien ego inhabitation tended to be… messy.

When he suggested that possibility, Alma shook her head.

"Thought processes stay generally the same, no matter the meatware used," she said, sitting back down. "It has to. If you switch brains but the architecture doesn't support your ego's processes, you get entirely new types of mental disorders. Usually coupled with lots of blood. But this."

She shivered.

"It not human, but it it's been modified to _use human neural architecture_. I've never seen or heard anything like it."

Shepard's blood ran cold at that, and he turned away for a moment, thinking. If Alma was right - and he had no reason to believe she wasn't - then they were potentially facing an unknown alien enemy, which meant a potential CASE BLOODY JESTER scenario.

"You are _absolutely_ certain that this thing isn't human, or any of our allies?" Shepard asked, and Alma nodded. "Okay, go get some food and rest."

She opened her mouth to object, but then her glowing eyes met his, and she closed her lips and nodded. She rose, and Vega hauled himself up, plodding after her. They crossed the observation deck and a few moments later passed through the doorway leading into the corridor beyond. The moment the corridor closed, Shepard turned back toward the interrogation cell.

He caught his own reflection in the armor-glass: his expression hard and cold, eyes like chiseled stone, a promise of destruction and pain lingering within them. Garm called it his "happy times face."

And lurking over his shoulder in the reflection, a wavering shadow, tall and lean, four spindly arms extending to the sides, as though preparing to embrace Shepard.

He whirled, _slowing_ the world around him, plasma pistol whipping out into his hands and helmet deploying. The pistol rose, pointing dead center at the figure's chest, and-

Nothing.

An empty observation deck, save for Garm, who was springing up into a vaulting somersault, plasma pistol and arc thrower in his hands, tail pointing straight out. Shepard swept his weapon left and right, only to find it empty and silent.

He let go of the power raging through his body, and time reverted to normal. Garm landed in silence on the deck a couple of meters from his chair, tail thrashing back and forth low to the floor.

"The Hel was that, Shep?" he yowled, sweeping the other side of the room in quick, twitchy gestures. "Frost giants?"

"No... no," Shepard replied, his heart pounding violently. He shook his head, and began collapsing his helmet and sidearm. "I thought I saw something. Maybe a hallucination."

"Psi?" Garm asked. Shepard exhaled, and then opened a link to the Masamune's bridge.

_Admiral Hackett? This is Major Shepard down in Interrogation._

_Major,_ the Admiral replied. _Go ahead. Good or bad news?_

_Had a hallucination down here, sir. No sensor returns, but our subject is psionic. Recommend a sweep and psi-alert to be on the safe side._

_Understood, Major. Haven't had our monthly drill yet, anyway. Carry on._

Shepard turned back toward the interrogation cell, calming himself by staring at the braincase in the chamber. After a few minutes, he opened a link to the interrogation team.

_This is Major Shepard,_ he sent. _Per my Sentinel authority, I am removing human-protected status from the subject. You are authorized to use all available means to interrogate it. Find out what it knows._

He settled down into the chair, clasping his hands before him, and watched in silence as the team went back to work.

* * *

><p>Two hours into the interrogation, and Shepard had to leave, calling in one of the more cold-blooded Intelligence agents to oversee the operation - which was rapidly looking like it would become quite literally surgical. He didn't know what that brain could actually feel, nor did he want to really ever find out.<p>

Fortunately, he had an excuse to leave the interrogation: the teams working down on Xin Hengsha had found something possibly connected to the missing psychics.

"Marshal Disler," Shepard said with a frown as he and Garm headed toward the Masamune's launch bay and their waiting Voidranger, where McTavish and the rest of his squad were standing by. The one critically-wounded soldier was still in medical, going through a healing vat treatment, but the other four were ready to go.

"Armacham VP on the colony," Captain Anderson replied. "He was found killed and partially eaten in the colony's processing plant. I don't think the timing is a coincidence."

"Definitely not," Shepard replied, and did a quick database check. "Cannibalism."

"Well, when you're desperate," Garm said with a shrug, and Shepard shook his head at the cat's low laughter.

"Some Mentals can pull fragments of stored memory and data from another human's neural network if they ingest their flesh," Shepard said, scowling. "They don't really test it very much in lab conditions, though. Data gained seems to be very fragmented, and decays rapidly upon death, so the flesh has to be raw and fresh."

"You think an SDC escapee was eating this Disler's flesh to learn his secrets?" Garm asked, and Shepard shrugged.

"Either that or we've got the freakiest case of corporate espionage I've ever seen," he replied, before switching back to Anderson. "Sir, why did the police wait so long to report this to us? Police report indicates Disler was found four hours ago. If they thought it was important enough to notify us, they would have sent it immediately."

"Obstructionist bullshit, Shepard, as usual," Anderson replied. "Xin Hengsha police are furious that we've got any presence on the on the colony."

Garm purred in amusement.

"And an XCOM task force rooting around in their dirty laundry and secret psionic labs wouldn't have anything to do with that, now would it?" he asked.

Anderson's face twisted in a scowl of his own.

"We didn't find any details about this murder until one of our own informorphs trawling the local network picked it up," he said. "We had to strongarm the police into letting us even see the report, let alone having access to the crime scene. They can't stop us from accessing the relevant data, but they can slow us down. Maybe you can talk some reason into them when you meet them face-to-face."

"We'll be down there in about twenty, sir," Shepard assured Anderson as they entered the sprawling hangar deck of the _Masamune_. "I'll sort this out, one way or another."

"Shepard, be careful here," Anderson warned. "You can't just bludgeon through bureaucracy."

"I can bludgeon pretty hard, sir," Shepard muttered.

* * *

><p>The trip back down to Proteus was fast and once again an unpleasant experience of wracking storm fronts and pouring rain. The Voidranger settled down once more onto Xin Hengsha's docking dome only this time the dropship was directed to land higher up, at a smaller cradle which had a pair of gun turrets facing inward along the walkway leading out to the ship. The guns didn't appear to be able to actually rotate back toward the cradle, which meant they were intended to cover the retreat of someone important.<p>

"Would have been nice to land here, instead of further down," Garm muttered as they started down the ramp.

"They we wouldn't have caught that brain," Shepard replied.

Waiting for them at the base of the ramp was Lieutenant Han, wearing the same police uniform as he had a few hours ago - only now he had augmented his sidearm with torso and leg armor and the butt of a SDC-issue fusion rifle poked over his shoulder. Flanking him were a quartet of other Xin Hengsha policemen, similarly outfitted.

"Major Shepard," Han said with a nod, his perpetual frown a few shades less intense than it had been a few hours ago. "I have transportation prepared. If you'll come with me?"

"Of course. I appreciate the escort," Shepard replied, and they started down the walkway together, the police escort moving ahead of them. "Do we know anything new about the murder?"

"Forensics are still processing the site," Han said. "The plant has been locked down. We believe the killer is using an augmented body, and escaped into the ventilation systems in the processing facility."

"So he could be anywhere," Shepard muttered.

"Unlikely," Garm said, and Shepard glanced to him. "This is a young underwater colony. Many modules linked together, but its all recent construction. Its not like the Citadel, with interlocking infrastructure built up over the centuries."

"Correct," Han said with a sharp nod. "The ventilation systems within the processing plant are extensive, but they don't extend past the plant itself. If he wanted to exit the facility, he would have to take one of the personnel entryways or fluid pipelines. Those are secured."

"How did you find the murder?" Shepard asked. Han exhaled, annoyed.

"That is the strangest thing," he said, turning back toward the XCOM team. "Weapons sensors in the area picked up a number of discharges. A fusion or plasma weapon, and several kinetic shots. We responded within minutes to the location and found the body and signs of a shootout."

"Was a cortical stack recovered?" Garm asked. Han shook his head. "Maybe whoever was shooting took the stack."

"That is a possibility," Han said. "Whoever was firing the weapons managed to slip our cordon before we could lock down the entire plant. That or they've hidden well."

"So the killer could have escaped as well," Shepard said, and Han nodded, frown deepening.

"It is a possibility, but our sensors have been picking up something moving in the ventilation system periodically. We have drones sweeping the vents and locking them down. Ah, this way."

He gestured as they reached the outer ring, pointing toward a doorway marked "Marine Transportation." The group entered and started down a circular hallway of metal and armor-glass, pale blue-white lights running in strips along the top and bottom of the tube.

"What about the civilians who attacked us?" Shepard asked. He hadn't received any reports from them when he'd gotten the data dump on the Disler murder.

"All alive, and will recover, physically," Han said. "Mentally, we don't know yet. None of them had cortical stacks, but some had recent backup insurance, which will give us a timeframe to find when they were abducted and implanted with puppet socks."

He paused, and stopped, turning back to Shepard.

"My superiors… appreciate that you used nonlethal force. Eleven of those men could have been killed permanently. You averted a tragedy, Major."

"Tell them I appreciate it, Lieutenant," Shepard replied.

"Do you know anything more on the cyborg responsible for this?" Han asked, and Shepard frowned, thinking for a moment. He finally decided straight disclosure was best. Hengsha and the SDC as a whole needed to know this.

"My Empath said it wasn't human, or anything she'd seen before," he said. Han's frown twisted into surprise. "I've started aggressive interrogation. Tell your superiors to assume a CASE BLOODY JESTER until we know more."

"I… see." Han's tone was flat, but his expression showed how much that warning was disturbing him. He turned away for a moment, and then stopped as the entered another chamber.

This one was a submarine pen, short but wide, featuring half a dozen marine vessels in docking pools. The ships were long, lean, rounded craft about fifteen meters in length, all bearing the Xin Hengsha Police colors and an unobtrusive pair of tubes on their undersides. Technicians and police officers, some clad in dive suits and breathing apparatus, moved around, working on the submarines. Han led them toward one of the docked ships, a side hatch sliding open at they approached, revealing a dim interior.

"Here is our transport, Major," he said. "We use these for rapid emergency response and transport. We should be at the processing plant in minutes."

* * *

><p>The ride was swift and smoother than Shepard expected. The police submarine slid through the water around the colony, and Shepard tapped into the exterior cameras. He got an impressive view of the colony, although it was mostly through the submarine's enhanced lighting due to the storms raging overhead. Hundreds of columns of metal arose from a continental shelf, which supported dozens of immense spheres and columns which were wreathed in countless lights. Other, darker spheres and cubes lurked among the residential modules of the city. Immense schools of fish, narrow, whip-like fish with gleaming blue and purple scales, flowed throughout the city's supporting columns, and a vast blanket of human-grown kelp covered the shelf around the base of the city, cylindrical maintenance drones moving through the forests and tending to the plants with mechanical tentacles.<p>

As they rode in silence, Shepard pulled a data dump from the Intelligence agents checking the murder site. The forensic investigation was being conducted by Sentinel Maruq, an Intel specialist at forensics. No new updates, beyond the fact that whoever had been shooting weapons in the place spoofed the local sensors and spimes, covering their entry and exit into the plant. Some basic traces from the weapons had been recovered, indicating someone had definitely been firing a fusion rifle and armor-piercing kinetic rounds. They'd also recovered quite a bit of blood and fluids associated with synthmorph bodies, including some electro-conductive liquid normally used by the geth.

"Shep, see this," Garm muttered as they rode, sending him a database link. Shepard opened it, finding Marshal Disler's records, including background and education, with emphasis put on his particular specialties.

_Disler's a psionic biologist, not a marine engineer,_ Shepard messaged. _Not a smoking gun, but definitely a link._

"Oh, and more bad news," Garm added, and sent him an alert from Market Garden that came through while he'd been reviewing the forensics.

"Great, the Citadel's finally showed up," Shepard muttered. Likely they'd already been here, or at least an STG team had been present, but now it was official.

A single Citadel frigate had arrived in system. It was a top of the line, next-generation hybrid turian/salarian design, like a flowing, double-edged dagger, and it was descending toward Proteus without slowing. And when Shepard checked the registry and authorization codes, he understood why.

"The Citadel's sent a Spectre to investigate," Shepard said. "Saren Arterius."

"Hm. This cluster still has some room to get fucked," Garm mused.

* * *

><p>The mixed team of XCOM and Xin Hengsha police docked at an exterior sub pen that serviced the processing plant, and they had barely started disembarking when an alert went through the local network. Han patched Shepard's team into the feed as they hurried out of the dock and through a police checkpoint manned by nervous-looking policemen in tactical armor.<p>

"-is one's squadron is finishing the lock-down of the freshwater storage and pumping station," reported a monotonous, gender-free voice through the radio feed. "Edgar Chen will be cornered in this area of the facility."

A video feed appeared in the corner of Shepard's vision as they hurried through the corridors, a pounding avalanche of nearly a dozen armored boots. The feed was coming from a camera drone following a squad of Hengsha tactical police advancing down a brightly-lit hallway lined with haptic displays and thick pipes along the ceiling. These policemen looked far more at ease in their heavy carapace armor and helmets than the regular cops from the previous checkpoint. Floating beside the drone was a hovering purple-pink jellyfish, wreathed in a pale blue mass effect shield and flight kit, holographic Hengsha Police badges hovering on its flanks. The hanar police officer carried two laser rifles, each in a pair of tentacles, along with another pair of kinetic pistols. His ID gave his Face Name as Xelen.

"This is Major Shepard, XCOM," the Sentinel called as they hurried toward that section of the plant, Han leading the way, at least until Garm bounded ahead of him on all fours. "We are closing on your position. Secure the site for our arrival, we will enter and clear."

"This one acknowledges your authority, Major Shepard," Xelen replied. "This one's team would not contest your desire to face a lunatic cannibal cyborg in close quarters."

Shepard wasn't sure if that was a joke. Hanar humor was an acquired taste.

"We'll be at your position in seven minutes," Shepard said. On the feed, the police were checking side doors and offices, throwing sensor drone clouds into them and then locking the doors once the rooms were confirmed clear. Shepard checked over the information on their suspect: an unremarkable dockworker, much like the men who had been puppeted earlier, except the man had been found on recent security footage holding a weapon on Disler and pushing him through the processing plant's corridors shortly before the Armacham VP's death.

Shepard glanced to Han.

"What about the plant workers?" he asked.

"The majority of civilians were evacuated when the shots were first fired," Han replied. "We found a few who were essential or unable to receive the alert while sweeping the rest of the facility, and they were detained for their safety. Everyone's been accounted for."

"Have they been scanned for puppet socks?" Shepard asked, and Han nodded immediately.

"First thing we did after the attack on the docks," he replied. "All of them were clear."

An alert from Shepard's muse came through as they ran through the sprawling complex: the Spectre's ship had launched a shuttle, which was plowing through the storms surrounding the colony and headed straight for Hengsha's docks. Saren Arterius would be setting foot on the colony in a matter of minutes.

Judging by the messages whipping back and forth across the Hengsha police bands, as well as the XCOM, SDC, and PPA naval channels, Saren Arterius was one of those Spectres who solved most problems by making things a hell of a lot worse first. Shepard could understand why a Spectre would be sent to this situation: the Council had a vested interest in maintaining human stability, considering their military alliance and the mutual threat they faced. But sending Saren... Either the Council didn't have anyone else on hand to respond to the crisis, or Saren was acting on his own discretion. Spectres had a history of coming across crises, building threats, or simply bad things in general, and resolving them one way or another.

They didn't do that as often in human space, if only because Spectres didn't have the same kind of freedom to operate as they did in Citadel territory. They had to have permission to act from human governments, although most governments let them operate anyway, and simply kept a careful eye on any Spectre acting in their space, in the event one of them needed a sharp and vicious boot in the ass. No one was impeding Saren, but Shepard could guess that everyone would have eyes watching his every movement.

Maybe that would keep the turian honest.

"Major Shepard," Xelen reported after a minute, his drone showing police clustered around a heavy, sliding double door, one of the two mechanical halves partially wrenched open, the edges marked with red blood in ragged handprints. "This one's team has finished securing the entries into the freshwater storage and pumping station. This door has been damaged by blunt trauma applied to mechanisms. This one's team will hold position and await your arrival, and there he is, open fire."

At the same moment that the hanar's monotonous order came through, the feed showed a bloody arm reach through the door, and a skeletal figure of burnt meat, bloody flesh, and gleaming chrome metal hurled itself through the door at the police. Weapons snapped up, but in the half-second it took to acquire the cyborg, he'd driven an arm through one cop's throat, ripping it open in a spray of arterial blood.

Then a storm of bullets and lasers converged on the cyborg, charring flesh and bouncing off what was almost certainly a vahlenite chassis. Edgar Chen - facial recognition confirmed that much - leapt back as more than half a dozen weapons, many carried by Xelan, drilled him from several directions. He blurred several meters back toward the door, and then leapt at another policeman, smashing an arm into the man's helmet hard enough to snap his neck.

Then Chen recoiled as said arm was blasted clean off at the elbow from several direct hits at the same time, the forearm arcing through the air in a mixture of blood, electro-conductive fluid, and sparking artificial muscles, courtesy of Xelen and his many, many weapons. The cyborg leapt away, ducking and weaving and rushing toward the door.

Watching the feed, Shepard found it strangely disconcerting to hear the hanar cop calmly state that "This one finds it appropriate that your mother has sexual relations with elcor who possess unattractive pheromones." while spraying Chen's dodging, jumping form with a constant barrage of laser beams and kinetic rounds as he retreated.

The cyborg escaped into the passage beyond, but Xelan did not let up. The hanar cycled his various weapons' ammunition in a blurring whirlwind of boxes and purple tentacles, and continued shooting through the open door while the other policemen grabbed their dead and injured and pulled them clear.

"The illegitimate offspring of diseased varren and krogan fecal matter may return," Xelen monologued as he kept shooting through the door. "Prepare your weapons to reduce him to slag if he possesses insufficient intelligence or sufficient reproductive fortitude to attempt another attack."

Shepard came across the scene less than a minute later, running at a full sprint, Garm beside him and the rest of the group on his tail. Xelen and two other cops were covering the door, no longer shooting, while another was treating the man with the broken neck. He was still alive, unlike the policeman whose throat was missing.

"Garm, you're on recon!" Shepard ordered as they approached. "McTavish, take your team in, stay together. Shoot to kill, we'll rip his stack or brain as needed. Han, secure this door, let nothing past you!"

Acknowledgements came back from his team, and Shepard moved past the hanar and humans covering the door, nodding his thanks as they backed up, and moved through the ruined doorway, sidearm leading.

* * *

><p>"Sir," McTavish said a minute later, "You sure you only want that little sidearm?"<p>

They moved down the corridor beyond the police checkpoint, Shepard holding his plasma pistol while Garm, McTavish, and his XCOM troopers spread out behind them, weapons at the ready. The hallway was about thirty meters long and lined with heavy pipes on either side. The illumination was dimmer here, and the sickly glow from their plasma weapons cast strange shadows across the room. The humming of working machinery and running water surrounded them, and the air was humid and carried a tinge of rust and something chemical.

"I brought you guys for a reason," Shepard replied, and McTavish nodded. Between them they had a plasma marksman rifle, two plasma rifles, an alloy cannon, and a heavy plasma cannon, along with plenty of explosives and blaster launcher rounds. Anything that could fit into these corridors, they could likely kill several times over.

"Fair enough, sir," McTavish replied.

They drew close to the door at the end, and Garm moved ahead, pistol in one hand and the other hefting a stubby, box-barrelled weapon with a drum magazine, the whole thing about the length of Shepard's forearm. It was a compact canister launcher that fired… well, anything you'd prefer to enter a room first, really.

In this case, Garm had loaded the launcher with microdrone canisters, and he cloaked as he approached the door, disappearing into invisible sensor-transparency. The door opened automatically as he approached, which kind of defeated the purpose of stealth, but cloaked as he was (and much shorter than a normal human), Garm didn't present an immediate target to shoot at. He lifted the launcher, set the range with a mental command through a smartlink to the weapon, and fired a canister into the room beyond.

The shell detonated twenty meters away, spraying hundreds of thousand of microscopic, sensor-equipped drones in a swiftly expanding cloud. Data rapidly returned from the machines as they scanned the storage and pumping area beyond.

"Bollocks," McTavish muttered. "Little bastard could be anywhere in there."

The freshwater storage area was half a kilometer long and a quarter a kilometer deep and wide. A long, solid metal walkway spanned the length of the chamber, starting about eight meters from the ceiling. Workstations and consoles were spaced every hundred meters along the walkway, next to vertical pipes and machinery built into the ceiling at regular intervals. The pipes descended into gigantic vertical tanks that ran from the walkway to the floor a quarter of a kilometer below. A latticework of catwalks, ladders, and stairways ran around the many gigantic tanks, and the containers had pipes running out of them at the bottom that fed into several other enormous pipes that ran out of the room.

At least the room was brightly lit, with wide, brilliant white lamps overhead, running the length of the room and positioned along the sides and alongside the tanks. The only other way out of the room was a similar set of doors on the far side of the storage area, which Shepard's display showed was locked down with a couple of squads of Hengsha police on the other side, their data updating in real time. Chen must have tried escaping through Xelen's team when he realized he was about to be trapped in this room.

"Move in," Shepard ordered. "Garm, leave us the launcher."

Shepard crouched to pick up the weapon as it appeared on the floor, and they advanced into the storage area, Garm bounding through ahead of them. Pistol in his main hand, Shepard started firing canisters into the massive chamber as they stepped through the doorway. Each explosion launched more microdrones to scout the huge room. One canister was usually enough to scout out something the size of a small apartment building, but there simply weren't enough of the tiny machines in one shell to search out a place this large. He programmed the drones to spread out and down, so they wouldn't waste numbers scattering over the ceiling.

The team moved along the walkway, XCOM troops training their weapons forward and over the sides, helmet scanners joining the drones in the search. Aside from the hum of the machines around them and the deliberate, slow clanking of their own boots on the walkway, the cavernous room was silent. The hiss and pump of Shepard's launcher and the distant crack of detonating canisters periodically dispelled the steady silence.

"I dinnae like this, sir," McTavish whispered. "Slippery bastard can come at us from any direction."

Shepard nodded but said nothing, advancing in the tense quiet and firing another drone canister every minute or so. He kept that pulse of psionic energy close at hand, ready to react the instant Chen showed himself. The minutes passed slowly, the team steadily clearing the chamber,

Then Garm pinged a spot fifty meters ahead and forty down, past the halfway point of the room and behind one of the tanks. Shepard and two of the troopers shifted toward it, weapons covering the marker. The cat was actually crouched on the railing overlooking the target, still as a statue, his position marked on their HUDs as he was still behind his cloak.

_Garm?_ Shepard asked.

_Movement,_ the cat replied. _And I hear machinery. Cybernetics. Pumping air, pumping blood and EC fluid._

Shepard fired the launcher, arcing the canister over the top of the target. Drones spread out and down, slowly descending behind the tank, scanning the area, and highlighted Chen.

The bloody, battered cyborg - now mostly a metallic skeleton wreathed in scorched artificial muscle and blackened skin - was hanging from the one intact arm, fingers hooked through the bottom of a catwalk along one side of the tank. His spindly legs hung free, swaying slightly. He'd found a spot between two of the tanks that mostly hid him in shadows.

They could see him clearly for a moment, before the cyborg apparently realized he had been discovered, because he suddenly coiled up, hooking his toes through the catwalk, and scrambled over the top. He crouched, and exploded up into the air, grabbing a walkway twelve meters overhead and swinging further up. He kicked off the side of the tank and launched himself further up.

"Is that skeleton doing parkour?" one of the XCOM soldiers said, even as everyone started forward. Shepard didn't reply, because he quickly realized exactly where Chen was headed.

He was going straight for Garm; invisible or not, Chen knew the cat was there. Of course, he didn't need a warning from Shepard. Even as the cyborg was leaping and kicking up the side of the tank, Garm was bouncing back from his position, leveling his plasma pistol. Bolts of blinding green lanced down toward Chen.

Shepard _slowed_, sprinting down the walkway toward Garm, and saw Chen leap clear of the tanks, flying up toward Garm with his intact arm hauling back to strike. Shepard's pistol rose, tracking, and he saw Garm pull the trigger at point blank, sending a plasma beam straight into Chen's face. Flesh was seared clean off, exploding in blackened chunks, but the cyborg went straight through the heat and his arm arced down.

Garm was slammed straight down into the walkway with a sickening crunch and a splatter of blood.

Shepard watched the whole thing in terrible clarity. He saw his partner go limp at the blow from the cyborg's hand, rocket down into the floor, and bounce, limbs flailing and blood flying.

The Sentinel wasn't sure, exactly, how he'd crossed thirty meters of open ground in an eyeblink, but his vision was coated in a savage, violent crimson, and a roar of pure hatred was tearing through his mouth. Chen had landed sometime during the last thirty meter sprint, his skeletal chassis glowing white hot where half a dozen plasma bolts; Shepard had no idea who had shot him. Chen turned toward Shepard, the Sentinel closing to within arm's reach, and then Shepard's left hand clenched, mass effect fields forming around his fist.

He raised his hand, and Shepard smote Edgar Chen with a left cross. Kinetic barriers collapsed as the Sentinel's armored knuckles collided with the side of the cyborg's jaw, and Shepard watched in detailed, wrenching slow motion as Chen's jaw deformed under the blow, artificial muscle tearing and the body spinning around so swiftly that it seemed to be moving at normal speed.

The impact sent Chen's chassis tumbling sideways and straight over the side of the walkway. He smashed into one of the tanks below and lay there for a moment, systems apparently stunned by Shepard's punch.

"McTavish!" Shepard shouted, and marked the target, before turning toward his downed partner. Plasma erupted behind him while he crouched beside the Garm's limp body, checking vitals - or the lack thereof.

Garm was dead. No question. Chen's blow and the impact on the walkway had been too much for the cat's body, especially with its small mass. Cortical stack was intact, of course, and Garm's ego was backed up. But still...

"Go and drink well, friend," Shepard said with a grim nod, standing. "I'll see you again when you resleeve."

"Bastard's fast, he's making a runner!" McTavish was shouting, and Shepard turned back to the side of the walkway. Chen was indeed back up and scrambling away even while being hammered by four plasma weapons. The roar of an alloy cannon sounded, and the cyborg's right leg exploded in a cloud of components and EC fluid. The vahlenite spike imbedded itself in the top of the tank; its velocity was dialed back so that it wouldn't accidentally blow a hole in the entire habitat.

The cyborg - now nothing but a plasma-riddled skeleton propelled by burnt artificial muscle - managed to hurl itself forward off the side of the tank with its one intact leg. It crashed hard onto a catwalk thirty meters down.

Shepard jumped down after it, _slowing_ so that he could properly aim his grapple line, and swung on the end of the line to land heavily on a catwalk a few meters above the one Chen had collided with. The one-armed, one-legged cyborg twisted his head back up toward Shepard, now resembling a deformed human skull.

"You killed my partner, asshole," Shepard snarled. "That's just another of him in Valhalla, as he'd put it, but I'm not letting you walk away."

Whether Chen could even understand what he was saying was unclear. Shepard wasn't sure if the mind in that skull was human, or if it was like the other stupidly-durable cyborg that had tried to kill XCOM personnel today. But Chen definitely didn't want to be captured, as the cyborg hurled itself off the side of the catwalk and took another tumble.

Shepard dropped down after it, using his grapple to slow his descent, and kept pace. The cyborg kept moving, awkwardly tossing itself down the side of the tank and the latticework of catwalks and stairways. Shepard quickly realized that this wasn't a blind panic, either. Chen was headed somewhere, and the Sentinel picked up speed, keeping pace with the cyborg's inelegant tumbles.

_Major?_ McTavish messaged. Shepard could hear the troopers starting down the stairs overhead, but they didn't mount grapples on their armor like he did.

_Try to catch up if you can,_ Shepard replied. _He's running to somewhere on the bottom floor. Can't let him escape or hide._

_Copy that, sir. We're a bit above you but we'll catch up. Hensha police are coming in behind us, they'll pick up the pieces and the kitten's stack._

Shepard sent an acknowledgement, but kept dropping and swinging after the cyborg, _slowing_ to get his aim and the timing of his landings right.

They both hit the bottom level a few moments later, ending up beneath the massive specters of millions of gallons of freshwater suspended in gigantic cylinders just a few meters overhead. Chen landed first in a crashing heap of battered and burned metal, and Shepard a second afterward, touching down lightly and releasing his grapple line. The Sentinel walked toward the cyborg as it pushed itself up on its one intact arm, coiling the remaining leg underneath itself. The mangled head swiveled toward Shepard, gleaming eyes fixing him from less than a few meters away.

"Still here," the Sentinel snarled, raising his plasma pistol. "Stop running or this gets messy."

Chen sprang up and scrambled away on his intact arm and leg, movements swift but jerky and sending it scuttling away in a crab-like gait toward the outgoing pipe, the movements unpredictable enough that Shepard held his fire. The Sentinel ran after it, not bothering to slow, his armor more than enough of a boost to keep up with the cyborg. He looked past the scuttling pile of mangled cyberware, and saw one of the outflow pipes about twenty ahead, looking less like plumbing and more like a subway or tram tunnel: a huge tube big enough to drive a Beowulf IFV through, running perpendicular to Chen's path.

And one of the sealed maintenance hatches on the side of the pipe was sliding open.

_That_ was where Chen had been fleeing to.

But the pipes were supposed to be locked down to prevent anyone from escaping in this direction. How the hell was it opening now?

_Chen has help,_ Shepard realized, and sent that message to McTavish as he sighted the cyborg with his pistol again.

Chen leapt for the opening, and Shepard fired. Two shots, dead center in the back. Green plasma bore into the cyborg as it reached the opening, blasting deep into its torso, and it jerked violently, arm flying outward.

The body then toppled, falling at the entrance to the hatch. The intact arm scrabbled up toward the doorway, jerking and weak, gripping the edge and pulling itself forward.

A pale-skinned hand, human, organic, reached through from the hatch and gripped Chen by the wrist. Shepard ground to a halt, aiming down the pistol's sights at the figure who emerged.

"Ah, I see," spoke a rasping voice, low and sharp, the tone curious but understanding. "My hound, mauled by one of XCOM's. Unfortunate."

The man was tall and lean, pale-skinned, with black, close-cut, slicked-back hair. His nose, chin, and cheekbones were sharp and thin, bladelike, matching his build. He wore a dull gray coat that hung past his knees, closed in the front and belted at the waist. It was an SDC Navy officer's coat, speckled with blood around the collar.

His eyes glowed a molten, dark purple, and it matched the faint corona of psychic energy surrounding him, striations of blood red slicing through it like veins in marble.

The psychic aura spread down through his hand and washed over Chen's mangled remains, and then the cyborg went limp. The aura faded, and the man exhaled, shaking his head.

"His actual name was Metzirov," the man in the coat rasped. "An unimaginitive one, but… devoted, in his way. The resleeving took almost all of his powers, but the alterations… well, he wasn't really human anymore. A quick and painless end, after all of his suffering, to bring me what he had learned."

"Who are you?" Shepard asked, making sure the rest of the team was getting his feeds as they descended.

"You came down here because of the unfolding international incident overhead," the psychic replied, and his narrow face was split by a knowing smile. He held up a hand, gesturing to the ceiling. "To find the missing pieces, so that the butchers can rest easy? Bring back their precious psychic weapons, so they can lift the blockade, and everything goes back to the way it was."

"I asked you a question," Shepard said, finger tightening around the trigger, but he could guess what he was dealing with.

The psionic abilities, the treating of others as minions or toys, the monologuing. This was a psychic who'd broken, overused his powers and damaged his mind, maybe hurt himself in a nova incident. Maybe not fully insane, but definitely twisted by his own abilities. He either needed help, or a plasma beam through the forehead. Shepard just had to figure out which, fast.

"And you deserve an answer," the psychic replied, and inclined his head.

"My name is Paxton Fettel. Let us discuss matters in private."

He didn't move, but red-tinged purple energy surged up around Shepard. He _slowed_, pulling the trigger on his pistol, but by the time he'd started to fire, the energy closed around him. Force slammed against his back, a violent pull from the psychic that managed to exert power in spite of the disruptive psi-cloak Shepard wore, and he was hurled toward the gaping hatch.

Fettel stepped back, a thin smile on his lips, and Shepard tumbled past him into the darkness.

* * *

><p>Within the debriefing simulspace, Marshal Disler wondered if they'd give him something to drink. His simulated throat was getting a bit dry.<p>

"What makes Paxton Fettel such a clear threat?"

The black-metal woman sat straight and still, giving nothing away, but Disler was accustomed to that.

"For one thing, unlike the Betas, he didn't resleeve when the lab was destroyed," Disler said. "Both Betas jumped to new bodies during the escape. That screws up psionic abilities until they can readjust. Fettel, on the other hand, kept his original body. If the security footage and last reports were accurate."

Disler leaned back in his chair, ticking off his other points on his fingers as he spoke.

"For another, he's an Energy Seven and Manifestation Six, while also a Mental Eight, but his Empath rating is minimal. No combat paralysis. Third, he underwent minimal alteration to achieve his current capabilities, unlike the Betas and the Deltas, so he's suffered no neural degradation. He's almost fully sane, or was, before the Synchronicity Event. Who's on point for the cleanup?"

"Marburg, sir," the metal woman replied, and Disler nodded.

"Conrad. Good man. He'll understand." Disler paused, thinking. "The more I consider it, the more likely it was a coordinated external attack."

"How so?" she asked.

"We had to have alerted someone. A competitor, or an intelligence agency from one of the other alliances. Hell, maybe a FEAR unit from the PPA picked up some of the testing we were using," Disler said. "In retrospect, we should have held off on the range-enhancement process until we were more certain about the Gallop copies."

"That will be for the Board to decide, sir," the interviewer replied, and he nodded. "Continue, please."

"SDC needed continent-scale control for the Replicas," he said, speaking as much to himself as to her. "Psi-sensitive Replicas are very new, but still, workable. We just had trouble with getting Mentals able to control them. The combat sensitivity from Empathy was such a massive hurdle, and the surgeries needed to alter Mentals to suppress their Empath powers left too many unusable commanders. Still, the Gallop copies boosted their range and signal resolution. It let them more precisely control the new Replicas. So our versions of the Gallops are finally operational. If nothing else, the Board needs to know that we've finally managed to make a workable version of them."

"I'll note that in my report sir," she said, and leaned forward slightly. Disler could see his simulated reflection in the dark metal. "You were able to boost the Commanders' effective range? Were you concerned about side effects?"

"We were always concerned about side effects," Disler said, shaking his head. Cleanup wasn't supposed to be concerned about these things, but whatever. "These devices were built from Ethereal communications technology after all. But boosting the Commanders' range must have done something. Allowed someone else's Empaths to communicate with them somehow. Someone was able to trigger a Synchronicity Event."

He shivered. Synchronicity was the ugly, _ugly_ word no one wanted to hear when dealing with Mentals. A strong Mental who could telepathically connect to another psychic's mind could potentially forge a direct psionic link, creating the psionic equivalent of a quantum communicator. It was a difficult event to replicate, but it had been done before, including once during the Ethereal War when Colonel Durand had used the primary Gallop device to Synchronize with the Ethereals themselves.

Of course, the current machines were far safer; they weren't using them to communicate with the Ethereals, after all, just as mechanisms to artificially induce amplification events. The aftereffects were what was worrying.

"Someone Synchronized with our psychics, and used that link to destroy the entire operation," Disler said. "They then provided the Betas with bodies to resleeve into and helped both them and Fettel escape. Its the only…."

He stopped, staring at the metal woman, pieces coming together.

"Who the fuck are you?" he snarled. "Cleanup knows these details. Marburg wouldn't waste my fucking time asking about this."

The metal woman stared at him for a few moments, before leaning back in her chair and shaking her head.

"Time appears to be up," she said. "Are you going to remain cooperative? I am not programmed to be cruel, but I need more information from you."

"Do you think this is the first time I've been killed and my stack taken?" Disler said, and sat back in his chair. He sighed, weariness settling over him, and shook his head while executing the security programs. They could limit him in simulspace, but his cortical stack was his own.

"You should have been more careful," he said, and managed a tired smile, before his vision blurred and went dark.

The Disler avatar went still, and the metal woman muttered an annoyed curse as she closed the simulation.

* * *

><p>"Crap," Garrus muttered as he looked over the terminal, setting his slushie aside.<p>

He and Alison were in a small warehouse they had rented in an industrial section of Xin Hengsha. The interior was cleared out of its previous contents, which the smell indicated had been a large amount of harvested fish and kelp, so they kept their olfactory filters on. In its stead the pair had set up a series of workstations, servers, and terminals, one of which was isolated and dedication to analyzing suspicious data storage and interrogating cortical stacks or AIs. The entire setup was collapsible and could be evacuated or destroyed in minutes.

He'd taken up guard duty this time, keeping an eye on the building and the equipment while Alison sat on the floor in a lotus position beside the interrogation terminal, wires inserted into jacks hidden behind her ears.

An alert popped up on the terminal, and Garrus's fingers flew over the haptic display for a moment, before he realized what had happened: the cortical stack had been outfitted with a data scrambler, which could be triggered if the ego it carried realized it was being coerced or interrogated. Disler had just wiped himself.

Alison's eyes opened, and she hissed, yanking the jacks out of her skull.

"Holy shit you colossal _fucking_ morons," she snarled.

"What happened?" Garrus asked. He paused. No, it was obvious what had happened. "How bad was it?"

"Garrus, tell me, how bad is 'They tried using Gallop machines as signal boosters for their psychics'?" she said.

He stared at her for a moment, jaw dropping a bit. His understanding of human history was short and straightforward, but his education after joining up with Alison's organization had been more focused and eye opening. He knew what Gallop devices were, and that knowledge was terrifying.

"I sincerely hope you're joking," Garrus replied. She shook her head. "Damn."

She stood, frowning in thought, and began to pace.

"Okay, so best case scenario: some other power bloc picked up their psychics and Synchronized, then sabotaged the entire operation. Its just another bit of covert nastiness between the superpowers. We can deal with that. Go public with the psionic end, send the Gallop insanity to XCOM. SDC loses face, ATC gets censured and maybe throws up a few people's heads on pikes, the blockade ends and status quo resumes. Go us."

"Worst case scenario," Garrus replied, "is that it wasn't a human superpower that Synchronized with ATC's psychics. It was something else."

"Goddamn CASE BLOODY JESTER," she said. "Or a CASE CHIMERA SUNRISE."

Garrus' mandibles twitched, a gesture that, like most, were carried over when his brain was switched from meatware to cyberware. The first of the scenarios Alison suggested was bad. But the second was catastrophic

Garrus loosed a mechanical sigh, pushing himself to his feet.

"Working for you is always interesting," he said. "Also terrifying. And periodically revolting."

"Neither of us has a conventional or organic digestive system, Garrus," she replied with a tired grin.

"I know. Isn't it awesome?" he asked, scooping up his rifle and another slushie to go. "What's the plan?"

"Disler's stack is cooked. The simulspace recording won't pass muster; anyone could fake something like that." She frowned, and shook her head. "Only thing I can think of is send what we have to XCOM, and then find Fettel. Bring him in alive as proof."

And hopefully end this whole impending international incident, and find out who was behind everything, for better or worse.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Codex: Humanity - Human Diplomatic Relations<em>**

_Diplomacy between the various human superpower-alliances (or simply "super-alliances") and the larger galaxy are highly complicated due to the fragmented nature of the human species. Unlike most of the other species in the galaxy, humanity has yet to have a majority of their population united under any single hegemonic government. Citadel diplomats and political scientists compare modern humanity to the turians prior to the Unification War that formed the modern Turian Hierarchy._

_The Pan-Pacific Alliance and the European Union are staunch allies, while the Strategic Defense Coalition is the single largest and most powerful of the alliances; historical, economic, and cultural rivalries and connections have resulted in these two power blocs being the most combative of rivals. The South Atlantic Federation is allied with the Jovian Republics, which are unique in that they have no presence on the human homeworld of Earth. The Russian Union is the weakest of the six alliances, but has sufficient power that it often serves as the "deal-maker" in super-alliance politics._

_The alliances have never engaged in open warfare between their members. However, covert actions, proxy wars on colonies, and "terrorist" attacks have been frequent occurrences, and at least once a decade there is a major military showdown that comes close to sparking war (one of the most recent examples being the SDC blockade of Proteus). The possibility of open warfare remains a dangerous spectre, although fears of an external threat, whether it be an attack from the Terminus, the remnants of the Batarian Hegemony, or the ever-worrying prospect of the return of the Ethereals has staved off open warfare between the alliances._

_With the larger galaxy, ironically, human relations are more stable. Each of the alliances considers the Citadel and the Geth Consensus their military allies, and freely shares non-classified technology and commonly available military developments. While trade exists between humanity and the Terminus powers, relations vary depending on the minor power and the particular human alliance. The only constant is a mutual hostility between humanity and the Cabal: while neither side is aggressive toward the other, they treat incursions into their territory as hostile actions and shoot or seize intruding ships on sight._

_Three additional factions also play a factor in human diplomacy. The Extraterrestrial Combat Unit, or XCOM, serves as a neutral force in human politics, and is often called upon to carry out mediating duties or to intervene in conflicts between the powers before they erupt into open warfare, although the leadership of XCOM resents being forced into this role. The Dead Orbit association is a collection of organizations, corporations, and communities that backs aggressive human colonization, in an effort to increase the overall survivability of the species by exploration and expansion. The Future War Cult is a combination of defense corporations and survivalist groups backed by large segments of the human population (and rapidly expanding into nonhuman populations as well) focused on large-scale military preparation. They push for advanced weapons research, survivalist training, arming of civilian populations, military expansion, and acquisition of and aggressive research of Prothean technology in order to prepare for the next great existential war for survival._

**_Codex: XCOM - Interrogation and Protected Status_**

_During the Ethereal War, XCOM had difficulty extracting useful information from enemy captives, primarily due to extreme difficulty communicating with them and their extremely alien mindsets and biology (the sole exception being the "Thin Men infiltrators, which could communicate with humans perfectly well). XCOM was forced to rely on aggressive and violently coercive procedures, including surgery and direct neural stimulation of captive aliens' brains, to learn about alien technology and capabilities._

_In modern times, however, such methods are both unnecessary and have the potential to cause literal alienation among humanity's allies. XCOM's amended charter places all citizens of human nations and those of human allies under official "protected" status, sharply restricting interrogation rules; in most cases XCOM is restricted to the same techniques as most law enforcement agencies. Individuals with sufficient clearance and just cause, such as Sentinels, specially-authorized Intelligence agents, and officers of Admiral rank and above, may rescind protected status from a human or alien prisoner, but they must demonstrate just cause in exacting detail, and the decision will be thoroughly analyzed by review boards from both XCOM Command and the subject's own government. Protected status may also be rescinded in the case of alien infiltration._


End file.
